Overlord of Pandora
by Omega Overlord
Summary: Story 3:Freshly anointed as the Grand Overlord, Ersmus Killgore sets out again to settle his restless spirit and sooth his troubled mind. What will he find waiting for him upon this alien world? Natrual selection in all its brutal glory.
1. New Dawn

Chapter 1: New Dawn

Netherworld Tower: Throne Room

Erasmus Killgore, Grand Overlord and God of Evil, stood on the balcony at the far end of the chamber, admiring the view of the vast underground that would be his home from now on. He smiled a little at the first title, something Gnarl had come up with upon arriving at the question of who was the real Overlord.

Truth be told, he had been rather saddened, and not a little bit angry, when Acheron had told him about the destruction of the Dark Tower due to all the time and effort he had put into the place, but the Netherworld was starting to grow on him. In particular, there was the aspect that there was an infinite amount of expansion that could be done to accommodate guests, or some such, and future family members. Really, all he had to do to have a new room was will the rock around him for it. Such was the benefit of being the Master of the Netherworld, a title Acheron had relinquished rather grudgingly.

On the topic of his son, he couldn't be more proud. All on his own Acheron had crushed an entire empire into rubble, and then crossed the void and done essentially the same thing with only cursory assistance from him towards the very end of the campaign. What hurt him inside was that he had simply not been there for the majority of his son's life, even if it was far from his fault. Acheron was twenty six, the boy had been five when that stupid elf had snuck into the dungeon and tampered with the old Tower Heart. Twenty one years, gone, and he could not help but wonder if his little boy would still have grown into such a perverse nymphomaniac that he was now. Not that he would ever say that straight to Acheron's face, he was the boy's father; he was supposed to be supportive. And Acheron wasn't really causing any harm, it just made him and Sophitia cringe from time to time. Well, it was twenty two years now, times flies, faster seemingly when you were no longer affected by it.

He caught the sound of soft footsteps on the stone behind him, rather far off actually but enhanced senses were one of the unadvertised perks of being a god. "**Someone's trying to be sneaky, why is that?**"

The response was a voice he instantly recognized, not to mention adored. "**Daddy, am I ever going to be able to sneak up on you?**"

He turned around to look at his daughter, Persephone. "**The odds of that are very, very low sweetheart.**" He held up his right hand and beckoned. "**Come on now; don't keep me waiting, what's the big surprise?**"

The teenager, a spitting image of her mother, Isabella, pursed her lips, clearly about to be difficult just for the sake of being difficult. "**What surprise? I was just walking along with nothing on my mind.**"

He couldn't help but smile at the display. "**You're hiding something behind your back; I'd say that counts as a surprise.**"

Persephone grinned despite being caught and all but skipped over to him, her hip length silver hair flying like a cape, and produced a small black box. "**Open it already!**"

His hands accepted the package and moved to open it, but stopped just short of lifting the lid. "**You know, I was relatively certain that the official party was an hour from now.**"

His daughter's purple eyes glittered excitedly. "**Well it's been moved up, so open it!**"

He delayed still more. "**You just want me to open your gift first.**" When the only answer he received was an annoyed groan he finally relented. "**All right, you win Persephone.**"

He opened the box with one deft flick of his wrist. On the inside was what looked like a violet diamond that floated slightly off the bottom, and when he moved to grasp at it there was a slight repulsion effect that kept his fingers a fraction of an inch away at all times.

His right hand rose, the gem now floating over his palm. "**It's most impressive, but you'll have to tell your poor father what this is.**"

Persephone shoved him lightly, which had no effect so far as moving him was concerned. "**You know full well what that is daddy, don't play dumb.**"

He smirked and glanced down at the gift. "**It is crystallized lightning, formed into a truncated triangle. So you're not just giving me something you made, you're showing off your growing skill at the same time.**" He wrapped his free arm around his daughter's shoulders. "**I'm very proud of you.**"

Persephone glanced between him and the gem in his palm, squirming a little bit. "**Daddy, you do know I'm supposed to be getting you to the party, right?**"

He pocketed the prize and released his daughter. "**Lead on then, dear, the anticipation is killing me.**"

The teenager let out a sigh and took hold of his right forearm, pulling him lightly towards the dining room that was a level above them. To facilitate a speedier ascent, he willed a set of stairs into existence in the nearby wall. It was with a still present note of awe that he watched the very world around him shape itself at his whim, well, at least the Netherworld. He was happily nowhere near omnipotence, happy to still be susceptible to surprise, and damn well happy to only be in one place at a time. After all two of those concepts would make every failure of his monumental, and one would make continued life pointless. Limits were good, so long as he was able to push them, and so long as there was more to experience, life was good.

He glanced up as he was about to reach the top of the stairs, closing them behind him step by step, and caught Persephone giving a barely visible nod to some as of yet unseen person in the dining hall. This brought yet another grin to his face as he closed his eyes upon taking the last step, judging only by the minute disturbance in the air and the slight pressure against his back that someone, probably Taki, had slipped their hands over the eye holes of his helmet. In spite of his age, which was sixty-something or eighty-something depending on whom in his family was asked, he felt almost giddy with excitement, and not for the reason most people would expect. This would be the first real family event that had all the eggs in one basket, so to speak. Well, the first event when all his living kin were able to remember the experience. Acheron had been far too young before the Cataclysm had separated them. Who he assumed to be Taki silently led him to one of the many obsidian chairs and pulled him back into it. And he waited patiently, leaving his eyes closed despite the lack of need. His family would let him know when they were ready.

The miniscule pressure lifted from his helmet and he cracked his eyes open. He was seated at the head of the table, and to his immediate left was Isabella, who had for once decided to wear something a little more modest. Persephone was next, seated as she was between her mother and her favorite aunt, Setsuka. Opposite them on the right in order coinciding with distance away from him, were Sophitia, her sister Cassandra, and Taki. The latter of whom was just taking her seat, confirming what he already knew in his head. At the opposite end of the table was his son Acheron with two of his mistresses, Queen Fay and Boa Hancock. The boy gave him a short nod as their eyes met before looking away, and he sighed internally. Clearly, their relationship as father and son was going to be a bit rocky for a while yet.

He buried his brooding and glanced around the table again. "**Quite a lot of unnecessary ceremony, don't you think?**"

Sophitia shrugged and responded. "Well, it was a welcome distraction from all the things we're trying to do to make this place completely livable. All work and no play, you know?"

He nodded once, recalling that, for the time being, their rooms were more barren than the Ruborian desert. His was as well, despite being the lord of the Netherworld. He really wanted to sift through the ruins of the Dark Tower, but there hadn't really been time yet. On that topic though, if someone had stolen the helmet of Ubelithon from his trophy collection, oh there would be a terrible reckoning for said thief when he tracked them down. There was a light impact against his right hand which broke his train of thought, and when he looked down there was a lightly wrapped, pale package about the size of an anvil resting against the his gauntlet.

Isabella's voice chimed in when he didn't immediately pick it up. "Go on, it's from your little pirate sulking down there at the other end of the table."

Acheron reacted to this, and rather indignantly at that. "**Excuse me, little? I'm taller than you are.**"

He picked the box up, keeping a wary eye on the altercation. "**Let's not get ourselves too riled up now, this is supposed to be a happy day.**"

He tore at the flimsy wrapping to draw attention away from Isabella's verbal barb, and judging from the eyes on him he was mildly successful. When he turned his attention to the gift and flipped the contents onto the table out fell a gigantic feathered hat colored black, with a white feather.

Acheron spoke up before he could ask the obvious question. "**It's an admiral's hat. I figured you could wear it whenever you take to the sea from here onwards, if you ever do.**" The boy waved off any thanks before they could even be started. "**You can give the credit for the idea to Hancock here.**" The young man lightly stroked the ebon hair of the mentioned woman, who seemed partially asleep on his arm, "**Because I sure had no idea in hell of what you get you.**"

He immediately doffed his helmet in favor of the hat, setting the arcanium work of art slightly to the side before setting the wide-brimmed adornment on his head. After a second or two he noted that the fit was a little loose for something one would wear out on the deck of a seafaring vessel, but he silently thought to himself, 'it's the thought, or effort that mattered.' He imagined that it looked a little silly, but there were no expressions of amusement arrayed around him.

His son nodded once, with satisfaction, before speaking again. "**Good, now that the Old Man has his gift I'm leaving. Got lots of things to do.**"

Sophitia beat him to the objection. "But, Acheron, it's your father's birthday!"

Acheron's head rolled back onto his shoulder. "**Yes, and now the event is over. Goodbye.**"

Before he could voice his own objection his son vanished through the floor, portaling off to who knows where with both Queen Fay and Hancock. Actually, he probably could guess but he didn't want to.

Sophitia smiled nervously, obviously trying to salvage the fairly ruined event. "Ah, well, was there, um, anything special you had wanted to do today?"

He let out a long sigh, quite aware of the fact that the "party" was well and truly ruined. "**Relax dear; you couldn't have predicted that, none of us could. I imagine that it will take quite a bit more time before he is at all comfortable with me being around.**" He paused for a short moment. "**As to your question, yes. I had considered picking a new portal on the wall and setting out somewhere else.**"

Setsuka reacted first, and sounded a little confused. "Already? We've been back for little over a month."

Isabella beat him to an answer, and a rather snarky one at that. "Yes, we're back where we were two years ago. I'm sure Erasmus is just dying to explore a place we all already know like the back of our hands."

He held up a hand in a gesture meant to calm tempers. "**Put a little more politely, I was going to say that we were all getting a little cagey those last two years. And I know it might seem a bit irresponsible of me to cut out on you all when there is so much left to rebuild but, I'll be honest, I need to do **_**something**_** before I end up as crazy as the minions.**"

His remaining family nodded silently, until Taki piped in with some rather sagely logic. "If there is any time a person deserves to be a little bit selfish and irresponsible it's on their birthday." The ghost of a half-smile graced the ninja's lips. "I guess you can consider this a gift from all of us, since someone else decided to be a petulant little twat."

He felt his left eyebrow twitch upwards and he decided to ignore the jab at Acheron's character. "**That's quite magnanimous of you.**"

The ghost-smile vanished, only to be replaced by Taki's usual expressionless façade. "It's not like we really need you around to make ourselves at home. You've already built our new rooms and pillaged more than enough gold from the dwarves for us to do essentially as we please. Like you told me soon after we met, you really aren't one for interior design." A twinge of thinly veiled sympathy passed through her black eyes, something meant only for him. "I figure you could use the distraction."

The reminder of the shaky relationship he had with his son was meant to be gentle, and it was, but he could ruminate on the issue on his own time, something he was likely going to have an abundance of out in the field. He stood, shoving the chair back under the table out of reflex, and gave a curt nod to his wives and daughter before starting down the main stairs back to the throne room.

Netherworld Gate: Unknown

Erasmus emerged from the Gate like a shot from a cannon, flying high almost straight up into the air before crashing down and absorbing the impact with his mighty knees. He slowly stood, taking in the scenery around him with a meticulous eye for details. What was obvious was that he was in a jungle somewhere, but nowhere familiar. The trees were absolutely huge, stretching up high enough that even craning his neck all the way back he couldn't see the tops. The local flora was dense, like a carpet that rose to his waist with broad, pliant strands. There were strange, almost comically so, varieties of plants; such as one which looked to be no more than a collection of large red spheres in a net suspended above his head, or a tree that looked more like a kebab than a plant. As an afterthought considering the foliage he glanced back towards the Gate, noting that it was still partially shrouded in a cloak of vines and leaves. Before it was active, one could easily have been forgiven for not knowing it had been there at all.

He sucked in a deep breath through his nostrils to familiarize himself with the appropriate scents, and immediately regretted it as the air burned its way down his nose. He muttered quietly. "**Note to self, never do that again.**"

All the same he took in a huge variety of smells, and the vast majority of them were a small variety of some sweet scent he could reasonably associate with a kind of flower. One smelled absolutely horrendous, and he traced it to a large green thing that looked like a giant grape. There was one other smell though, that made him pause, one that bore some similarities to the smell of adrenaline, but similarities only in the sense that it was a complete parallel. A muted twang hit his ears and he reacted accordingly when his eyes zeroed in on the source. He twisted his body at the waist, letting the incoming arrow whisk by his right shoulder to embed itself in the trunk of a tree behind him.

He glared at the brush that had produced the arrow, sure that there was something, or someone, alive in there that had shot at him. He commanded, "**Show yourselves, or I shall reveal your burnt corpses at my leisure.**" To illustrate the point he raised his left hand and produced a fireball the size of his throne back in the Netherworld.

A short moment passed before there was a rustling sound in the bushes, a short span to the left of where he estimated the shot to have originated from, and something stepped out into the light that gave him a mild start. The creature was about two feet taller than him, no mean feat, and was of an extremely lean build. Indeed, the limbs looked more like twigs to him, but that was a biased opinion. A short shock of black hair topped its head, pulled out into a long braid that wrapped around its long neck. Large yellow eyes that held a quiet grace affixed him, set in a face that looked decidedly elfish to his displeasure. And perhaps the single most important fact, the skin of this creature was blue, about as blue as Sophitia's eyes had been when they first met. This blue was accented with reds and yellows that he could easily tell were some manner of paint. Four more of these creatures emerged from the brush, two on each flank, and one on the right was holding a very large bow. In fact, all of them were armed thusly, just all but this one seemed content to approach him with weapons sheathed.

The one in the center opened its mouth and produced some sort of chattering language, but it was one that was far outside his realm of experience. So, the creature might as well have been speaking utter gibberish. He frowned as he thought for a moment on a solution, then extinguished the fireball in his left hand and fired Evil Presence at the whole group in the same motion. The arcs of blue lightning jumped from the lead creature to the others, locking them in place while he sifted through their minds and gathered as much knowledge on their language as he could. He might not be able to speak the words, but he would at least be able to understand the gist of whatever was spoken. As he peeled off the spell he did one more thing, he deposited the words of his basic speech in the mind of the leader, so as it would understand him in return.

He drew Soul Edge while the creatures staggered to their feet, admonishing them before they could all draw their bows. "**You can thank me later for the crash course in the common tongue; I do not particularly care at the moment for an extended lesson in your speech patterns.**"

The lead creature held a hand up to signal the others to stand down, yellow eyes staring like the gaze of a hunted beast. "You, who or what are you?"

He nodded once in satisfaction before answering, not lowering his blade in the slightest. "**Names are reserved for friends and lovers. You may call me The Overlord.**" His eyes flicked back and forth between the five creatures, assessing individual levels of fitness and combat experience. "**Now, your turn, who and what are you?**"

The question seemed to embolden the leader, who stood a little straighter before answering. "We are the Navi of the Timpani tribe. These are my students in the way of the hunt." The "Navi" gestured at the jungle around them with its arms. "And this is our home, the home of Eywa." The leader's focus fixed back on him. "You are one of the sky people, the invaders, the destroyers."

Internally, he was quite intrigued, because that phrasing meant there were other humans wherever he was, but "sky people" was a little too enigmatic for him to think of a definite theory. He decided to remain polite, and lowered the point of Soul Edge to the ground. "**I don't suppose you would consider leading me to-**"

The Navi that had initially shot at him hissed like a cat and fired again, prompting a volley from the three other armed Navi. He responded with his basic shield spell, chuckling quietly as the arrows clattered off and fell to the ground. A cry of "flee" was issued by the lead Navi as they turned as one to do exactly that, but they weren't going to get off that easily when they had the audacity to strike at him, especially after he had been so polite. He focused on the two on the right before they could make it to the brush, snapping his fingers and summoning two pillars of fire that erupted directly beneath the two fleeing targets, turning them both into ashes inside of a heartbeat.

He took off in pursuit, his vastly superior speed closing the gap in fairly few strides to sword range. He swung from right to left with one vicious cut and killed the former leader, leaving him with just the two that were now taking to the trees like monkeys he had seen back in the jungles of Africa. He sheathed Soul Edge and grabbed at the tree the two Navi were climbing, his arcanium gauntlets easily digging into the wood and propelling him upwards after his quarry. Once or twice his feet slipped on the trunk of the tree, giving the two Navi just enough of a lead to start leaping across the higher branches. He hesitated for a moment, wondering briefly if the branches would support the weight of his armor, but ultimately leaped after them like he had on the agility course Taki had set up for him when he was learning the ways of the ninja.

He stuck to the thicker branches, which were few and far between, and steadily drew closer. Once he felt reasonably close he struck again, leaping across the path of his two targets and slashing from left to right at the one in range. He landed the blow, but it was a shallow cut along the Navi's back that wasn't going to slow it down all that much, especially with this much fear and adrenaline pushing them. The branch he landed on cracked and he grasped at the trunk before he fell all the way back to the ground far below. He succeeded, but there were no more branches within his sight that would support him. Determined to not let his prey escape he threw himself after them again, this time using the tree trunks themselves as his road and carving deep gashes into the wood as he shimmied around the exterior to line himself up for the next jump. It was surprisingly exhilarating, not to mention novel, as a chase at ground level would have been a very simple matter for him to wrap up in a matter of seconds.

The Navi he had wounded was slowing now, blood loss trumping adrenaline and causing it to stumble at odd moments that threatened to send it plummeting to the jungle floor far below. The front runner, the instigator, would pause and glance back occasionally, clearly torn between helping a member of its clan and saving its own skin. He couldn't help but grin at this development, even if he could easily sympathize now that he had pulled his family back together. The wounded Navi landed on a particularly large branch that was supported by a tangle of smaller ones beneath it, and stumbled again, falling to one knee and almost sliding off into the air. He seized the opportunity and pounced like a tiger, landing feet first on the Navi's back and snapping it's neck with one savage movement. He then turned his gaze towards the last fleeing Navi knowing in his gut that the target was probably going to get away the instant he saw the runner climbing still higher into the web of branches.

Deciding to take a risk he cocked his arm back, Soul Edge primed for a mighty throw. If he judged the distance and angle correctly he should be able to skewer the fleeing hunter as easily as if he were standing less than a foot away. If he failed, well, the worst that would happen would that he would be forced to scour the jungle for a lost weapon. And considering that Soul Edge glowed brilliant red when it was out of his direct possession it would be quite easy.

His sword seemed to sense his intent. "_You would not dare…_"

His eyes flicked up towards the blazing eye of the bloody blade that was poised over his shoulder. "**Really? After all of the other things I've put you through, cutting and stabbing through some of the vilest humans either of us has ever laid eyes upon, you draw the line at me throwing you, even if that would stop me?**"

Ignoring the pointed objections of Soul Edge he brought his arm forward and hurled the weapon like one of the throwing knives he had trained with under Taki's tutelage, with an appropriate adjustment for the vastly differing heft of course. The sword's echoing bellow of rage tapered off as it drew away, but the far more pleasing sound was the wet, slicing sound that echoed back towards him along with the strangled cry of agony of the impaled Navi.

He shouted down at the falling Navi, chuckling quietly. "**Mind that last step.**" He took his sweet time turning and making his way to a suitable tree for a descent, climbing down one hand at a time rather than simply sliding down. Yes, it took figurative eons, but that was almost his exclusive reason for being here in the first place, killing time. Plus, it would annoy Soul Edge to no end to be idle any longer than necessary, and that was almost a reward in and of itself.

Walking with a purposeful gait he strode towards the smell of fresh blood and burning, both scents that inevitably clung to Soul Edge, and used them to pinpoint the blade among the undergrowth.

He seized the blade by the hilt and tore it from the charred carcass of the Navi. "**So, what was it like to consume your first sentient, non-human soul?**"

The blood red blade grumbled at him as he twirled the weapon and clipped it to his back, flatly answering as its eminent glow faded as his will reestablished itself. "_You should know as well as I do that it was far from novel. Their souls were even weaker than humans._"

He grinned lightly at this. Compared to Soul Calibur, Acheron's claimed weapon, Soul Edge's personality was about as colorful as the rock of the Netherworld, ergo, boring. "**I'm sure the same variations apply, some are stronger than others, some weaker.**"

The weapon growled again, speaking in the same fiery voice. "_Let us hope so. I grow tired of these scraps you seem intent of feeding me._"

His heavy boots shifted the jungle floor and he turned to the same heading his Navi prey had been so intent upon. He wondered if they would be stupid enough to lead him right back to their home. If he remembered correctly, and he was quite sure that he did, the deceased lead Navi had claimed the other four as his students, neophytes, beginners, etc. So, if they were inexperienced it would stand to reason that they would immediately fall back on an instinctual desire for safety.

Thusly assured he started walking, keeping a wary eye and ear open for further disturbances. And as it happened, there was indeed another, a low rustle that spoke of either a predator of similarly skilled hunter. He paused where he stood, conveniently located in the deep shadow of one of the great trees, narrowed his eyes to minimize the glare and scanned the underbrush for signs of the other presence. Immediately, silence fell across the jungle, or what passed for silence out in nature. The birds still cried out and animals still called to each other in the distance, but nearby all was still. Ultimately his patience was rewarded and a lone Navi exited a small thicket a short distance to his right. He smiled to himself, a cruel grin that graced his face whenever he was about to do something diabolical, and made his move, hunting the hunter for the brief second it took to burst from the shadows and clothesline the lone Navi in the back with such force that he almost broke the alien in half.

With a flick of a finger he removed the broken, yet still alive, Navi and tossed it a short distance ahead. "**Your efforts are rather quaint, but you seem to have forgotten that you are not the only thing that can be silent when it needs to be.**" He stepped on one of the Navi's trailing legs as it tried to crawl away, smiling to the same cruel smile to himself. "**Now just where are you going, little forest elf?**"

Again, the Navi hissed at him like an animal, feebly thrashing in an attempt to escape as it cried out in a pathetic, juvenile voice. "Why? Why are you killing us?"

His smile remained, as all victims would eventually ask this question, and he stepped on the blue thing's chest. "**I should think that answer obvious. Your kin shot at me and I didn't like it. Hence, you and your people receive the honor of being the first to die at my hands on this journey of mine.**"

The Navi, whom he supposed he could tentatively identify as male, coughed as its chest was crushed. "No, all of you, the sky people-"

He reached down and seized the creature by the throat. "**I can't speak for the other humans here, but my personal reasons are just as I said. Plus you are unlucky enough to look disturbingly close to something else I despise. Is that illogical of me, perhaps, but I can't be brought to care. I've had an extremely poor start to my day, which just so happens to be the one day when things should all be going my way, so I think I'm entitled to be a bit of a ruthless bastard. Add to that my prerogatives as the God of Evil and any sense of morality that is not wholly intrinsic to my person simply does not apply.**" He glanced up in the direction the young Navi had been attempting to crawl. "**Now, moving on from the immaterial questions of why to the very tangible question of where. I'd bet a good amount that you were attempting a straight run home, yes?**" He chuckled darkly; "**Or crawl, as it were.**" The look of abject terror in the thing's eyes told him all he needed to know. "**Very nice, oh, but don't worry, you won't be alone in your afterlife for long if you believe in one. Until I find a reason to do otherwise wiping out your home is as good a thing to do as any, and perhaps I'll be able to attract the attention of the other humans. People, in my experience, are usually a bit less 'shoot on sight' when it comes to new things.**"

With minimal effort he snapped the Navi's neck and resumed his implacable march towards the assumed Timpani home. Whether it be village or city, or even a simple collection of animal skin tents he would not hesitate to raze the facility to the ground. Such was his right, but he could assume from the last words of that Navi that there was more going on in this place than simple destruction of land. Perhaps, when and if he met with these other humans he could learn the truth. If it was open war as he suspected, then maybe he could choose as side, or battle both factions at once. Only the passage of time would tell.


	2. Rampant Devastation of Aliens

Chapter 2: Rampant Devastation of Aliens

Pandora: Jungle

Erasmus Killgore marched on through the growth at a steady pace, having spotted what he assumed to be his destination a long time ago. Said destination was a tree, giant in scale even when compared to the ones he had dealt with so far. Even if it was not the home of the band of hunters he had slain earlier it had to be important. Primitive people put undue significance in objects and locations of size, considering the Great Pyramids of Egypt, or the massive scale of the Roman Coliseum. He supposed that there was significance to that mythos though, after all, the human mind automatically assumed that which was larger than it to be more powerful. He himself was evidence of this even before his rise to godhood. And if he was intimidating to normal people at only eight feet, the Navi must have been terrifying to the first humans they met when they rose above even him.

Since he had arrived, night had fallen, revealing the world around him to be a place of great beauty. Anything and everything shone with a light of its own, from fern leaf to the animals that scurried out of his way as he progressed. These animals were only visible for a brief moment before vanishing into the brush, and it was not worth his time to give chase, but from time to time he would get a clear view of what looked to be the alien analogue to a dog, or wolf perhaps. A low slung body that seemed to possess six legs if he was seeing thing correctly. Out deeper in the trees he would occasionally see larger things pass by, but whether these creatures were predator or prey he did not know. If they were prey though, he marveled at the scale of animal that would be required to be predator to such a beast. Either or, the beasts decided to leave him alone. Whether this was due to his natural aura of menace of a lack of aggression was open for debate.

More strange plants had crossed his vision as well; things that appeared as fingers rising up out of the ground topped with a small tuft of orange that glowed in the night, large red flowers on equally large stems that seemed to turn and follow his progress, and the most amusing so far, a shrub that would vanish into the ground at his approach with a small sucking sound only to rise again just as suddenly as he passed by. Truly, he envied the Navi one thing and one thing only, that they had had far longer to appreciate this world than he had, though to them the aesthetic wonder of the flora must have been only a passing thought.

On the topic of the blue elfish lookalikes, he found himself again wondering what that hunter had meant by "sky people" when referring to other humans. Surely the humans that lived here did not possess wings? If they did though, that would be, again, wondrous. But, surely he would have seen some kind of aerie by now if such a thing were true, or some kind of floating city? His mind whirled with potential explanations, each admittedly more childish than the last, until he finally dismissed it. He could accomplish nothing by daydreaming. That much was universally true.

He arrived at a small ridge which gave him another clear view of his destination, the tree rising up in a clearing upon which dark shapes moved about. Even considering the hour, which must have been abysmally late to any living thing that required sleep, they restlessly meandered about. They did not however, appear to be either human nor Navi. These animals possessed four legs and bore great similarities to a standard horse, but even his godly eyes could not make out great detail at this distance. He glanced down, seeing now that the clearing and tree occupied a grand basin that could easily have been called a sea were it filled with water. The slope itself was quite gentle as well, and would cut a significant portion of time off of his trip were he to simply jump. If he wanted to continue to take the scenic route, he would be required to traverse a much longer trail that seemed to wander around the walls of the basin for miles. When faced with that boring trek his choice was quite easy and he vaulted off the ridge at a low angle to meet the ground.

He hit the soil walls of the basin, digging the sides of his feet in only slightly to control both his speed and direction. Veering off to the left, he noticed a Navi sleeping with its back to the wider clearing. He pushed off with his long legs, sailing silently through the air to pulp the alien's head against the rock it had been sleeping against. For a moment he stopped, noting that this particular Navi seemed a bit leaner than the others. He glanced down towards the chest area, noting a lack of gender specific parts as opposed to a presence of. Still, the differences between elfish men and women were hard to spot as well, and he was not about to go rooting beneath loincloths to ascertain the sexual identity of his kills. He silently concluded, without remorse, that he had executed a Navi female.

Now that he was on the meandering path, about seventy five percent of the way down, he figured he might as well stay on it. If there were more guards, as he guessed his latest victim was, he could use this as an opportunity to exercise his stealth abilities. And he would have that opportunity soon, there was a small fire lit down what one could consider a "level" of the path where the direction abruptly flipped back on itself, a switchback. Down below, there were two Navi. Judging by build he could guess that both were female. He shot a glance both ways along the path, which was dark due to the soil not glowing like everything else but no barrier for his eyes.

He remained still for a moment, flexing his fingers and debating silently on how he would handle the kills. Reaching a choice, he silently slid off the ledge he was on and dropped like a guillotine on the unsuspecting Navi. The one on the left looked up just as he came within reach, but he silenced it by stabbing his fingers into the large eyes and straight into the waiting brain. The one on the right never knew what happened, as he broke her neck at the same time as he ripped the head off of the other guard. Nearby, something else stirred, and it was with a sigh of exasperation that he turned his gaze to one last Navi that was rising from a bed of leaves, this one male.

He lunged and clamped a crushing hand over the mouth of the Navi before it could crow a warning, whispering as he did so. "**You picked a very bad night to fall asleep on the job.**"

He ripped the razor point of his right index finger through the Navi's throat, severing both the carotid artery and jugular vein equivalents, leaving the dying humanoid to do little more than gargle helplessly as its lifeblood rapidly drained onto the soil. But as he lowered the corpse slowly to the ground a warning cry issued forth from above him. A patrolling guard must have found the body of his first female victim.

He let out a weary sigh as the Navi guards all fell in line charging towards him. "**Well, you win some you lose some.**" He turned his gaze towards the line of blue aliens. "**And you will certainly be losing far more than I will.**"

He held up his right hand, summoning his preferred mystical weapon of choice, fire. This flame was released in a long stream that flowed ironically like water, enveloping the charging Navi in a burning cloud that peeled charred flesh from bone and burned hair away from scalps. While the scintillating whoosh of the flames was certainly quiet enough, the agonized screams of his Navi victims were not, and more boiled out of the giant tree across the way like hornets out of a nest.

He stared down at the clearing, where hundreds of Navi were charging towards him, some on what he could call horseback and some on foot. "**Step one; attract a phenomenal amount of attention, check.**" He drew Soul Edge and waved his free arm, causing a wall of flames to erupt around the entire clearing, with him on the inside. "**Step two, cut off all escape for both parties, check.**" He sprinted down the path, reaching the frontline Navi and brutally bisecting both 'horse' and rider with one mighty swing. "**Step three, unleash such terrible carnage that generations yet born will speak of it only in hushed whispers for centuries to come…**" A devilish grin spread across his face as the Navi around him seemed to realize the terrible fate that had come for them. "**… In progress.**"

Pandora: Timpani tribe home tree; morning

Erasmus lay with his back propped against the charred remains of the Navi settlement, discovering last night that the blue people actually lived in the tree in small hammocks. This was of course only after slaughtering more Navi than he could possibly count, women and children included, that he had had the time to actually look around. Just for kicks, he had tried one of them that looked to be strung for an adult male. Predictably, it had snapped the moment he set the full weight of his armor upon it. With his exploration done he had torched the entire thing, counting on the massive smoke signal to draw the notice of any human presence. If it drew more Navi, well he could burn that bridge if he came to it, literally.

As an interesting side note, he had discovered that the meat of the Navi horses was actually quite savory when seared to the right degree. And in this case "seared" meant flash burned to death. He had never been that good of a chef, and he seriously doubted by now that he ever would, but he knew meat. He filed away the thought of preparing some for his family for a later date, sure that there would be plenty of opportunity for them to sample this gorgeous world, in all respects.

At the edge of his extreme hearing range he detected something, a light thrumming sound that piqued his interest immediately. It most certainly didn't sound organic, so he assumed that it couldn't be the Navi. They were far too in love with nature to use anything more mechanical than their tools and weapons. So that left other humans, right? He supposed that it was possible that there was a third party that he had not heard mention of yet, but he hoped not. That would just make things more complicated.

In the sky that he considered East a shape appeared, one that at first simply looked like an oval flanked on either side by two smaller circles. But as it drew nearer he could pick out a face through what he could assume to be a window in on the front of the device, a face that he was pleased to see as human. Judging just from what he was seeing now, the moniker of "sky people" could have simply been referring to the object he was now seeing, but something in his gut told him that the notion was off.

The device landed close to the giant tree, standing on what looked to be two metal rods bent at either end and attached to the body by metal struts. From this object's belly emerged a group of four people, three men and one woman, that all held more objects that ranged from fairly small to rather large. The humans held these objects in front of themselves as the stalked towards where he stood, moving like a well trained team. Each one was wearing what seemed to be some kind of clear mask over their faces, and what purpose that served he could not tell. They all appeared to be armored, each with plates that seemed part fabric and part metal, the men wearing far more armor than the woman. They hadn't seen him yet, understandable since his ebony black armor would blend in quite nicely with the charred tree he was leaning against.

The humans reached the base of the tree, still unaware of his presence, and one of the men opened his mouth, speaking in a fairly high pitched version of the common tongue with just a hint of a Spanish accent. "Holy hell, what happened here? It's like everything just decided to burst into flame at the same time."

One of the other men nudged the first speaker with the side of the object he was holding and gestured to one of the Navi that had been sliced in half. "No, some of them have what appear to be blade wounds, if you can call that a wound. You think that the blues are fighting among themselves?"

He decided to make himself visible, letting a joking bit of indignation enter his voice. "**You know, I find it mildly insulting that you think a Navi could have done all of this.**" All the humans, or soldiers as was quite obvious, snapped towards him with mechanical precision. "**Sorry, did I startle you? My fault for being so quiet up till now.**"

The third man, the one holding an object large enough that it required him to hold it against his hip, gestured around with a quick wave of an arm. "You did all of this, by yourself? You slaughtered an entire Navi home tree, by yourself?"

He glanced around at the carnage. "**You sound impressed, and I'm guessing that is a good thing. But as to your question, yes, I did. If you don't believe me I can demonstrate.**"

The one woman answered. "I think we'll take you at your word." One of the woman's hands rose to the side of her helmet and a crackling sound filled the air. "Papa Dragon, this is Able Bravo, we are at the target." There was a pause and there were words in a male voice that he couldn't quite hear before the woman spoke again. "No sir, we have the cause in front of us. No he seems friendly. Yes the cause is a he." The woman turned her gaze to him. "The colonel would like to see you." She glanced at one of the scorched Navi corpses. "Provided of course, that you agree to come with us."

He glanced towards the device the humans had arrived on, secret glee welling up inside him. "**Since you were polite enough to ask, then yes I will come along. The first Navi I met shot at me without a single word spoken.**"

The first human, the Spanish one, nodded knowingly as they all headed towards the flying device. "I feel your pain man, uh, you are a man, right?"

He followed the lead of the woman, climbing into what he could consider the belly of the metal contraption. "**I'm quite sure I am, last time I checked anyway.**"

The three remaining men piled in, and once they were all settled the woman banged heavily on one of the sides. "We're all in, take off."

There were simply so many things for him to look at, in particular the very craft he was sitting in. He watched the wheel-like things spin up, faster and faster, and it seemed that they were the cause of the thing getting off the ground. And just like that, they were flying. Some part of him felt like a little kid again, even if he wasn't flying of his own power. He stuck his head out the door, admiring the view and how quickly the ground passed by beneath them, almost oblivious to anything else.

He felt a tap on his shoulder armor, and turned only slightly to look into the face of one of the soldiers. "**Something I can help you with?**"

The soldier stuck out a hand. "Nick Ryder, assault specialist."

He glanced down at the offered hand, mildly surprised at the steel in the man's spine, before extending his own hand in reciprocation. "**Erasmus Killgore, Grand Overlord.**"

Nick nodded slowly. "I'm not going to pretend that I know what you mean by that, but ok." The soldier pointed at the others consecutively. "That's Carlos and Yogi, light recon. And the lady is my little sister, Lisa, sig spec."

Carlos carried on the conversation. "So how'd you do it man? How'd you take out an entire Navi village by yourself?"

He brought up one of his hands and snapped his fingers, producing a tiny explosion of flame. "**Let's just say that I have a very fiery personality, one a bit too hot for the Navi to handle.**"

The small group of soldiers chuckled freely at the pun as their craft carted them off into the unknown.

Pandora: The Plains of Goliath

Nick Ryder kept one eye solidly on their "guest" for the entire flight from the Timpani home tree, despite his apparent friendliness. Further, the man, and he really did look like one, had an aura of pure confidence about him and yet was looking around like he was slightly lost, like he didn't know what anything was. And what was with that title he gave himself, "Grand Overlord"? There was something menacing about that, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Then there was the fact this guy could somehow call fire out of thin air, which was just creepy. But, he would grant that this Erasmus guy was funny, witty, and an all around nice guy, so far. Then there was, of course, the consideration that he had wiped out an entire village and was wantonly joking about it almost immediately afterwards.

His sister, Lisa, leaned out of the door, eye clearly caught by something out in the air. "Pick it up pilot, banshees on your tail!"

Immediately springing into action without conscious thought, he pulled the hammer back on his Banisher machine gun and hastily mounted in at the right door. He cranked the sight towards the rear, leading the first blue-skinned banshee by about half the creature's body length for a decent chance of landing a round. The only drawback of this gun was the spread, and the fact that he would waste a lot of bullets before he landed a solid hit. That was why his sister was supporting him with her standard issue rifle, the exact opposite end of the spectrum. The problem was on the other side of the Samson. Carlos and Yogi were both armed with phalanx shotguns, both of them useless at this range.

The Overlord glanced back and forth between them and the two recon soldiers, seeming mildly confused by the sudden eruption of gunfire, "**Problems?**"

An arrow skipped off the fuselage right next to his head and he flinched, but he still responded. "Yeah, and if you could do something fancy to help out those two that'd really make my day!"

Wordlessly, the ebony armored giant shifted around till he was leaning out of the left side door. There was a flash of light and heat, and a burning banshee trailed smoke across his firing lane as it crashed to the ground below.

He heard Carlos shouting over the gunfire. "Man, you can ride shotgun with me anytime!"

Even though they were fighting for their lives he couldn't help but smile a little bit. Danger had a way of bringing people together more effectively than any number of other methods of social interaction. The act of placing your life in another's hands was the ultimate test of trust, and was played out virtually every day on Pandora.

He tracked bullets across another banshee and chanced a glance over his shoulder before announcing his observations to the rest of the crew. "LZ is only three clicks off people, keep at it."

He half expected to hear a question immediately from their guest, but apparently the Overlord knew that there was a time and place for questions. Particularly one in which they were not getting shot at by angry natives.

He heard his name called in the unmistakable baritone rumble of the Overlord and turned towards the source. "What was that? Something important?"

The Overlord repeated himself. "**I need you to get the pilot to roll this craft forty five degrees to the right. There is a Navi positioned above us that is preparing to dive, and I'm guessing that would be very bad for us.**"

He craned his neck back and caught sight of a tiny wing overhead, confirming exactly what the Overlord had said. He screeched into his radio. "Pilot, do a barrel roll." He directed his next order at his fellow soldiers. "Hang onto something!"

He watched their guest, and Erasmus really did hang on. The metal hull of the Samson screeched as it crumpled in the Overlord's armored grasp, but as the Samson began its slow roll the dark giant remained focused upwards. He saw the trail of a long stream of flame, heard the agonized scream of the Navi rider and the banshee, and felt the heat as the flaming corpses fell past the Samson. The thundering reports of anti air cannons shattered the day immediately afterwards, ironically soothing his spirit as Navi banshees were blown out of the sky. The Samson straightened out and headed for the landing pad in the center of the firebase. And standing right at the bottom of the pad was the man himself, Colonel Miles Quaritch.

The Colonel approached the Samson with perfect military precision, before snapping off a quick salute, "Lieutenant."

He mimicked Quaritch's posture and salute as far as his gear would allow, "Colonel, sir."

Colonel Quaritch motioned towards the Overlord, who was catching some flak from the pilot for damaging the Samson. "That our Unknown?" Once he indicated the affirmative Quaritch nodded once and muttered something out loud. "Big son of a bitch, isn't he?"

Erasmus joined the conversation, towering over both him and Quaritch due to the angle of the ramp. "**I take it you are the Colonel that wanted to see me.**"

Quaritch leaned backwards slightly to look the Overlord in the eyes, "That I am." The Colonel's gaze traversed the ebon armor before settling back on Erasmus's face and speaking in the clipped, gruff tone of an extremely seasoned military professional. "I'll be brief; I've got seven different kinds of hell falling on my men across this entire region. Now, the way my sig spec tells it you are either a walking apocalypse or have extremely poor taste in napping locations. Whichever way it is, I don't have the luxury of being picky when it comes to my allies. Can I ask you to support my men?"

The Overlord's helmet inclined slightly forward, and he received the impression of a devil's grin. "**Well, since you were kind enough to ask politely. Just point me at the Navi and watch them die.**"

Quaritch's face betrayed nothing, but the Colonel's eyes showed a glimmer of approval. "Now that is an attitude I can respect." Quaritch turned to him; "Lieutenant, a moment of your time." The Colonel dragged him aside out of earshot of the Overlord. "Ok son, give it to me straight, what's your impression of tall, dark, and spooky over there? You've seen his handiwork first hand."

He bit his lip for a moment as he chose his words. "I think you put it best sir; tall, dark, and spooky. He shows absolutely no remorse for slaughtering every man, woman, and child in that village, but otherwise he seems perfectly civil, even pleasant."

Quaritch snarled at the idea. "I really don't care if he was Mother Teresa reincarnated, until I say otherwise I want eyes and ears on him at all times, am I understood soldier?"

He subconsciously swallowed his fear of the Colonel, a feeling matched only by the boundless respect; "Perfectly, sir."

Colonel Quaritch gave him an approving nod that emphasized the legendary scars on the side of his head. "On your way then son, report to my squad leaders for your orders, dismissed."

He saluted and turned away, letting out the breath he had been holding and noticing only now that he had been supporting his machine gun with only one arm for a while now, needless to say it hurt like hell. Adding to his luck, the Overlord was right in his way, leaning against a stack of empty ammo crates.

The dark giant waved casually to him. "**So, that colonel seems like a good sort. A bit high strung but that's perfectly understandable given the circumstances, he's got a war on his hands.**" The Overlord rose to his feet. "**Any big objectives, or should I just take a path and kill anything blue that I see?**"

He responded honestly, no reason to do anything less. "We've got three Navi war leaders in the region. The Colonel wants each of them taken out before we advance on Tantalus."

One of the Overlord's red eyes grew slightly bigger, an assumed eyebrow twitch. "**Is now a good time for me to ask what Tantalus is and why we are advancing there?**"

He pointed off to the north. "See that giant circle of floating rocks, that's Tantalus. There's an old Navi sacred site there, called the Well of Souls, that we built a device to exploit. Commander Falco, I mean ex-commander Falco, has gone rouge and stolen that device. If he mishandles it, he'll probably kill everything on this planet. And it is very likely that he will mishandle it."

The Overlord filled in the rest. "**So we are securing this area so we can pursue this Falco unmolested. All that's left is for you to tell me where I am needed.**"

He started to explain it verbally, but then he had a bright idea and started working at the strap on his wrist. "Here, take my GPS. You see this red arrow in the center of the interface, that's you and the direction you're facing." He strapped the piece of tech to the smaller of Erasmus's two gauntlets. "You see this yellow circle, the Navi leader Swanta is somewhere in that region. I can share with my sister so don't worry about me."

The Overlord held the GPS up like a watch. "**I see, go west into the yellow area and make Swanta go ta ta, easy enough.**"

He flashed the dark giant a thumbs up, already making tracks for the south gate of the compound. "Exactly, and assist any other people you come across." He waited until he was out of earshot before raising Colonel Quaritch on the radio. "Sir, you've got your eyes. Lock onto my GPS signal and you have the Unknown's real-time coordinates."

Quaritch gave him the affirmation just as he reached the south gate, where his sister was waiting for him in her AMP suit. "Spying on our friend?"

He picked up a fresh drum magazine for his machine gun from the nearby APOD while he answered. "Not spying, just keeping track of him. I'd think you'd be a little more freaked out by the fact that he can throw fireballs from his bare hands and crush high grade steel with just his fingers."

Lisa walked the heavy-duty machine through the south gate, drawing the hammer back on the massive integrated gun as she went. "A little, but I think I'm a good judge of character and I think we can trust him. As powerful as he looks, do you think there is even the slightest doubt that he could have killed all of us before we could even have reacted back at the Navi home tree?"

He conceded the point. "No, he could have incinerated us with a snap of his fingers or cut all of us in half. And I'm not going to hold my breath that guns and bullets are getting through that armor of his either."

His sister smirked through the canopy of the AMP suit. "And that hurts you deep inside because you like to think the proper application of firepower can solve anything."

He made a grand gesture with his arms, holding his machine gun briefly with one hand. "Hey, I've been right so far on this freaky rock, haven't I? You alone are proof enough of that, always running around in your AMP suit whenever you have the chance."

Lisa didn't answer, and just kept marching off to the southwest where the second Navi war boss was stationed. He sighed, hoisted his machine gun, and lumbered off in the wake of the robotic weapons platform.

Pandora: Plains of Goliath

Erasmus eavesdropped silently on the brother and sister as they discussed the covert surveillance he was currently under, not feeling betrayed at all by the concept. He fully understood the mindset, and empathized with the Colonel for the paranoia that a war brought to the forefront of the mind. If they wanted to keep track of where he was, fine, no harm no foul.

What interested him more was the notion that all of the objects he had seen up to now cradled in the arms of the soldiers were guns. He was familiar with flintlock pistols, and only because Acheron carried a pair on his belt, but the size and sophistication of the vast majority of the weapons around him threw his mind for a loop. Even that humanoid machine that the girl had walked off in, maybe especially so, was a weapon that he would love to get his hands on. Although this meant he would need to expand his forge to include a machine shop, or whatever one would call a workshop that specialized in complicated devices, he felt giddy with delight over the new instruments of death and carnage he could construct.

He looked down at the device strapped to his wrist, and orientated the point of the red arrow towards the yellow shaded area on the map. Once that was done he glanced up and found himself looking out the west gate, easy enough.

Starting forward, he drew Soul Edge from his back and flourished the blade once before settling into a steady run. He murmured to the Evil sword. "**Excited? You shall soon be feasting upon the souls of many Navi, more so than last night perhaps.**"

Soul Edge grumbled back as the first Navi came into view. "_I doubt that very much. And I doubt still more that their meager souls can satisfy my thirst._"

He dove into the fray and impaled a Navi warrior from behind while responding to the sword's morose attitude. "**Oh whine, whine, and whine, you are absolutely impossible to please.**"

He looked down after slaying another dozen or so Navi and found himself looking into the eyes of another human soldier, one of a weary looking group that inhabited a trench dug into the ground in front of a large rock formation. Two AMP suits, as he had heard Nick Ryder call them, looked to be the backbone of the defense. Also, a few human dead were stacked to the rear of the trench, impaled with arrows the size of his entire arm.

He spun on his heel and erected his shield spell before addressing the men in the trench. "**This is it? This is all you have to show me? I thought I was coming out here to support a group of soldiers, not a bunch of cowards that hide in the dirt while the enemy approaches unchallenged. Rise up, now is the time for attack to avenge those brave men that lie behind you.**"

He did not wait to see whether his brief speech had roused the men, their roar of anger was evidence enough of that, and instead rushed the Navi that were sending volley after volley of arrows against the shimmering blue barrier of his spell as if they hoped to break through with sheer numbers. He reached the mystic barrier and pushed, noting in the mild reflection that the men were rising out of their meager fortifications like angry wolves from a den. The magic shield held until he used it to crush the line of Navi archers against the walls of the ravine, whereupon it shattered like glass and the shards shredded what was left of the corpses.

He heard the rhythmic staccato of gunfire behind him and pressed himself flat against the stone walls, literally watching the bullets track past him and into the bodies of the Navi warriors that were filing down the plateau they were attempting to defend. He noted with approval that the shots fired from the AMP suits seemed more than powerful enough to rip an unarmored target apart in one or two hits.

A line of shadows on the walls of the canyon brought him to bark out a notification to the advancing soldiers, using one of the phrases he had picked up in the flying craft out of reflex. "**Archers on the ridgeline, look sharp.**"

The two AMP suits raised their weapons and brought their fire to bear on the line of Navi that were still stringing their bows, shredding the aliens before a single shaft could fly. He took this opportunity to scale the sheer wall above the soldiers, tossing the occasional exploding fireball into the deteriorating mass of Navi still holding the village as he climbed. Topping the plateau he was presented with the back of an armed Navi, this soon ceased to be a problem as he cleared the surrounding area with another wave of flame.

He waved his free hand wide, rapidly adjusting to the concept of commanding purely ranged soldiers. "**Spread out and search three by three. I want everything that's blue to stop breathing by yesterday.**"

He turned his gaze upon the village itself, noticing that there was a fairly isolated part of the plateau that was separated from the rest by a narrow stone span. At the far end, on a small circular island of rock, was a large ornamental display of woodwork that he could assume was the sort of insignia of the local war leader. He could assume this, because in front of it was a Navi standing with the air of calm only a commander could pull off. He made particular note of the headdress, thinking he could identify other leaders by it if he remembered the basic size and shape, but otherwise the Navi seemed to be waiting for him.

He smirked as he realized this, walking at a brisk clip towards the island of stone. "**After all, it would be rude of me to keep my opposite among the enemy waiting.**"

Walking out onto the span he took the time to look down off of both sides. This was more for the purpose of listening to the soldiers tearing through the primitive village to the music of gunfire and flames than any scenic quality, though that was not bad either.

The Navi war chief, Swanta if he remembered correctly, gravely nodded to him once he was within easy sword range. "I have been expecting you, you or the blood kin."

His fingers twitched restlessly on Soul Edge's hilt, but he restrained his combat bloodlust well enough to speak on semi-polite terms. "**And by 'blood-kin' I am assuming you are referring to Nick and Lisa Ryder. What might be so special about the two of them?**"

Swanta's left eye seemed to twitch involuntarily as he spoke. "They, like you, have caused us horrific losses over the course of this war. And for what, to heed the bidding of the RDA? I stand here to offer-"

He held up a hand and the Navi shut up accordingly. "**Ok, right now I don't know whether to be amused or insulted by this, so I'm going to boil my logic down for you. First, I don't know who or what the RDA is, at least not yet, so it is irrelevant for this conversation. Second, my bidding always has, and always will be my own. I am supporting the humans here because they extended me the hand of friendship instead of a poisoned arrow. And third, don't think I don't see the play here, the sleight of hand; you recognize my power as an engine of destruction and desire to have that force directed at your enemies. And for that I am most definitely insulted that you think me stupid enough to fall for that. I would condemn you more for it, but I can tell that you personally clearly don't want me on your side either, which makes this whole argument moot.**"

Swanta grimaced, pulling up a longbow and stringing an arrow. "So be it, human."

The arrow was loosed, and flew straight for his chest. It impacted dead center, and clattered to the ground with a small but satisfying clink. A demonic snarl twisted his mouth as he advanced at a funeral march pace, only bothering to block or dodge the arrows when there was a chance they would connect with his face, and slowly pushed Swanta back towards the ornamental wooden barrier. The Navi's back hit the decorative shield and the light in Swanta's eyes died, a clear sign that the alien had accepted impending doom. He threw an uppercut that shot Swanta's body through the barrier on a high upward trajectory, following up immediately with a fireball that incinerated the Navi leader before clipping a banshee higher up.

He heard footsteps on the stone span and turned only his torso to look at the soldier advancing towards him and preempted his query. "**Was anyone else wounded?**"

The three soldiers approaching saluted before the one in the middle responded. "No sir. One man got mauled pretty badly by one of the banshees but he'll live."

He paused to consider for a moment what he had just heard. "**You know, soldier, you really don't need to call me 'sir,' I'm not your official commanding officer.**"

The soldier waved the other two back towards the village before answering. "With all due respect, sir, a commander is someone that gets his men off of their asses and puts the enemy on theirs. We'd still be hunkered down and dying in that ditch if you hadn't come along. Now, I don't know how the hell you were doing what you were doing, but all of us owe you are lives. We don't forget that."

He smiled a bit at that logic. "**Very well put soldier, very well put indeed.**"

The man nodded once and held a hand to his ear. "If you'd like, sir, I can get you a ride back to the base."

He glanced skyward once, picturing the craft he had arrived to the battlefield on. "**No, I think I can handle it on my own. But I do appreciate the offer. And, you can inform the colonel that Swanta has been eliminated.**"

The soldier relayed that information and looked back up at him. "Done, but sir, how are you going to get back?"

He smiled and glanced down at Ryder's GPS, whatever that stood for. "**The old fashioned way, probably the same way you'll be getting back after the battle is over.**"

With two running steps he launched himself off of the plateau and back towards the base.

Pandora: The Plains of Goliath

Colonel Miles Quaritch stared at view screen after view screen inside the dimly lit command bunker that was passed in front of his face, fuming a little more on the inside with every one. He hated this, being stuck in a base while there was war being waged on his behalf. It railed against everything that he stood for as a soldier, but it had to be done. As the ranking officer on this god-forsaken hell hole it was his job to keep as many of his men alive as possible while winning the battle, and regrettably he could not do that from the front lines. There was simply too much ground to cover and too many troops deployed at once. Oh how he wished this war had been brought down to the level of one army just slugging it out with the other on one battle line.

One of the enlisted officers approached him and saluted, inexplicably nervous. "Sir, the ah, Unknown has returned from the battlefield."

He nodded once to show he had heard before gesticulating a silent order for the officer to return to their duties. All the same though, he understood now why the man would be nervous. He was still uneasy himself about this "Grand Overlord" that just showed up out of thin air when they needed backup the most. It was too tidy for him to accept without serious scrutiny. But, if actions spoke louder than words, then he supposed he could place a limited amount of trust in the Overlord if the situation demanded it. He turned from his station to walk out and meet with said Overlord, but drew up short when his gaze caught the glowing red eyes that could belong to no one, or nothing, else on all of Pandora.

The Overlord stood framed in the light of the doorway, reducing him to more of a shadow than a man, but at the same time making him appear all the more menacing. "**I trust that your men out in the field informed you that Swanta is literally no more.**"

He again nodded in the affirmative. "That they have, along with heaping a great pile of praise onto your head for pulling their asses out of the fire."

The Overlord's hands spread wide in a gesture of humility. "**It was no trouble, and it was a very informative excursion for me so all parties came out for the better. Well, all save the Navi.**" He leaned against the frame to let one of the officers out and remained situated thusly. "**Now, I know my assassination mission, more or less, was part of a three-pronged offensive against the Navi command in the area. Is that operation complete or is there more to do?**"

He narrowed his eyes and thought silently for a moment, debating with himself whether or not he should let someone who was technically a civilian in on the finer details of the operational plans, and ultimately decided to go ahead with it. "No, thanks to your efforts, Lieutenant Ryder, and our forces to the North the Navi have all but been driven out of this sector. Lieutenant Ryder took off for Tantalus in our Dragon gunship approximately…" He checked his watch to assure the accuracy of his words. "… Five minutes ago. With any luck on our part they should have engaged Falco and-"

A ground shaking rumble and sustained flash of bleached red light from outside cut him off before he rushed out the door past the Overlord to see what the hell was happening. High up to the North, the light was originating from Tantalus with such intensity that even as far away as he stood it still hurt his eyes to look.

He put a hand to his ear, barking into his headset. "Lieutenant Ryder? Lieutenant Ryder report damn it. Tantalus is lit up like a Christmas tree so what the hell is going on up there?"

A response finally came through, just as the red light intensified still more. "Assault Specialist Ryder reporting in sir, Sig Spec Ryder is a little busy right now tending to the Emulator."

A heavy thud to his right diverted his attention. It was a Navi body, and he automatically glanced up to see that more Navi were simply falling out of the sky towards him. He shuffled his feet to the left quickly, dodging out of the limb range of another falling body, drawing his sidearm and putting two rounds into the back of its skull when it started to move again.

He shot another glance skyward to make sure he wasn't about to get crushed before speaking. "The Navi seem to have lost control of their Banshees, does that make sense to you?"

The response came following a short laugh. "You know, I think it does. Ryder, out."

An unmistakable voice came from behind him, not exactly addressing him directly. "**It would seem that this battle is won, does it not?**"

He glanced into the brilliant glow of light from the Well of Souls, somehow not at all reassured. "Maybe, this one battle. But I wouldn't hold my breath that this is the end of it."


	3. Overlord Orientation

Chapter 3: Overlord Orientation

Pandora: Over the jungle

Erasmus Killgore sat calmly in the belly of the flying craft that the soldiers around him referred to as a "Samson," and kept the majority of his attention directed outwards at the sea of green tree tops that was passing by beneath him. The only other draw was the mannerism of the soldiers themselves, all of whom were currently strangers to him. They, two women and one man, must have heard of him through word of mouth, because though their eyes held a kernel of cautious respect their guns were still vaguely pointed in his direction and had been so for the entire flight.

None of the three soldiers could seem to work up the courage to try and talk to him yet, which said more about his menacing persona than any lack of gall on their parts. After all, facing poison arrows which were guaranteed to kill you if they hit took quite a bit of guts. But the relative silence, broken only by the rhythmic thrumming of the Samson, was far from disquieting. He welcomed the break in interaction so he could withdraw for a moment and take stock of his situation, compiling the list of the various assumptions he had made up to this point. There was the assumption he could make about the culture of the Navi based upon the words of Nick Ryder, the fact that the blue aliens were divided into disparate tribes that oftentimes would not get along. He could assume this because no one had, at any point, mentioned any tribe other than the Timpani, which led him to further assume that the clans left each other to fight their own battles. This begged the question of what kind of threat could unite the entire race of aliens, but was something he could ponder later.

Then there were the questions he wanted answered about his current hosts, the RDA, or so Swanta had said. What were they doing on Pandora and how had they angered the Navi so? More importantly, at least to him, was what was going on with Earth, assuming that there was an Earth for these people to come from. He doubted that it could be otherwise, from the simple example of their technology. He doubted that there was enough mined metal on Pandora to build a single Samson let alone the fleet he had seen back on the battlefield. He could possibly get these answers wherever this craft was currently bound.

In keeping with that line of thought he turned his gaze towards the woman seated directly opposite of him with a mind to get the name of their destination out of her. "**Pardon me miss,**" he waited until the woman met his eyes before continuing. "**To where exactly are we bound?**"

His earlier assessment on the mental state of the soldiers, or at least this one woman, was confirmed by the slight stutter in her voice. "Ah, Hell's Gate sir. It's our main base on Pandora, safest place you can find if you're human."

He pulled his head inside the Samson and refocused his attention on his fellow passenger, deciding to familiarize himself with his fellow humans while he had the chance. The woman he had just spoken with was a fairly tall brunette; he would guess around five feet ten inches, with green eyes and fairly pale skin. The weapon she was holding, while he could not really identify it, was the single most common firearm he had seen thus far and she held it with a certain white-knuckled grip that he had seen once or twice. Her face, what he could see within the confines of the clear mask, betrayed a certain softness, notably the half-formed double chin.

A tiny snort of amusement escaped from him before he spoke up. "**What's your name, young lady?**"

A small lump traveled down the woman's throat before she answered. "It's, ah, it's Amanda. Corporal Amanda Marsh."

He leaned forward slightly, propping his torso up with an elbow on his knee. "**Tell me then, and answer honestly. You are not accustomed to fighting on the front lines, now are you**."

The other woman chuckled openly, giving Amanda a slight start before the brunette could answer. "No sir, I, I'm usually the cook at the Blue Lagoon outpost. The Colonel pulled almost everyone from every base to fight so, so I got assigned to Tantalus."

The other woman, a blonde of middling height at around five foot six with chocolate colored eyes, burst with laughter at this statement. "Sure, 'assigned' is the word. Whether you actually did any real good or not is open for discussion." The blonde lowered her gun and leaned towards the brunette, voice taking an authoritative note. "Isn't that right, maggot?"

Amanda visibly cringed under the leer of the other woman. "Yes, yes sir."

He silently watched the exchange, glancing to his right only once to meet the eyes of the only other man in the space, a six foot something brute of a man with almost no neck holding a gun like the one Nick Ryder had wielded, to share an amused glance. However, before he could become acquainted with this soldier, or the entertaining conversation between the women could continue, a soft clunk reverberated through the craft and his attention was again brought outside while he reflexively braced himself against the roof of the Samson, inadvertently buckling the metal upwards. He glanced around furtively, hoping silently that no one would notice this time.

Upon deciding that, indeed, no one had noticed his unintended vandalism he extricated himself from the now silent Samson and reunited his boots with the ground, at least so far as he was concerned. Around him was a bustle of activity, people rushing to and fro, soldiers and others moving what he could assume to be supplies away from the craft, all alike wearing the same clear mask. Behind him, and on all sides, stood high walls bristling with armed soldiers and what he would like to think were even bigger guns. In front stood what he could think of as the main structure, a large, squat cylinder that supported a still larger, and again squat, cube. Clear windows that ran the length of each side showed more people in military uniforms bustling about at some unknown duty.

A sudden flurry of cussing brought his attention back down to earth, so to speak, and towards the blonde woman from the flight. She was holding one hand to the side of her head and hissing furiously into it. "What do you mean I have to- No sir, I understand, doesn't mean I'm happy about it but I'll do it."

The blonde whirled towards him, a flat glare decorating the face beneath the clear mask, cradling the gun she was holding like a child. Clearly, something to do with him, and something the woman was not happy about. He could guess, and it struck him as rather funny if his hunch was correct.

He meshed his fingers behind his back as she approached, drawing himself up to his full height just for appearances. "**I take it then, that you are to be my 'escort' during my stay here, at least for the time being, yes?**"

The woman looked taken aback for the slightest of moments, before more profanity spewed from her mouth. "What? Fuck no! How dare you even suggest that?"

His only reaction was the slight upward twitch of his right eyebrow. "**Ah, I'm sorry but is there some foul definition of 'escort' that I am unaware of?**" When the only response he received was a bewildered gaze he dropped the topic and moved on. "**Very well then, name and rank?**"

The woman's gun arm lowered, leaving the firing end of the weapon dangling mere inches off of the ground. "Staff Sergeant Linda Wright, and yes, I am supposed to show you around."

A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. "**If I may, I believe, correctly, that your true orders are to keep watch on me at all times. Is this not so?**"

Linda made a grand show of shrugging. "You want to call my bluff? Fine. Yeah, you aren't supposed to leave my sight till the sun goes down. And then I'm supposed to confine you to a particular room that Command hasn't told me about yet."

He nodded once, still maintaining his formal posture. "**I appreciate your honesty.**" His stance loosened as his eyes roamed the fortress, seeking out places of particular interest and forming a short list inside his head. Within a few seconds he set off for a corner of the yard, beckoning his "warden" with a terse flick of his wrist. "**Why don't we start over here. You can answer a few of my questions along the way.**"

Cursing, yet again, the blonde soldier hustled along in his wake, struggling to keep up with the brisk pace set by his longer legs.

He kept his gaze locked straight ahead, intentionally not looking at the woman. "**First, I suppose something that's held my curiosity since our first meeting, and by that I of course mean when the Ryder siblings and I met at the Timpani home tree.**" He waved about with his left hand, gesturing towards the people milling about. "**The masks, what purpose do they serve?**"

Essentially jogging to keep up, Linda answered between bounds, voice rising and falling in time with her strides. "Pandora's atmosphere is toxic to humans, too much carbon dioxide or something. I'd die in a minuet max without this thing on." She started jogging backwards in front of him after a brief burst of speed. "Speaking of which, why the hell aren't you falling over?"

He paused, looking down towards the woman while a devilish smile spread across his hidden face. "**If the air is as toxic as you say it is, then it makes little difference to me. The condition of the atmosphere does not matter to one that does not need to breath.**"

Linda stopped dead, forcing him to do so as well if he didn't want to trample the woman, and fixed him with the single dumbest expression he had seen in a long, long time. "You, you what?"

He sighed and stepped around the still blonde. "**Yes you heard me correctly, and I have no wish to toot my own horn, as it were, nor do I think you could understand currently if I explained it to you. So for now you will just have to take my word for it.**"

His attitude of indifference was not something he was just throwing about casually, he was gauging the character of this woman who was supposed to be watching him. Rank-wise, a sergeant should respond at least subliminally to someone with an air of command, such as the one he was deliberately letting show through. He had commanded entire armies of a million men, so he was certainly qualified, and if he acted as if he were used to deference, which he was, Linda should reasonably, and instinctually, fall in line. If not, well, it spoke to a certain type of rebelliousness that he could also twist if need be.

His first assumption proved true, Linda started to object to his statement but simply muttered a quiet "yes sir" before settling back in to a light jog behind his brisk gait. It would seem that he had a pure born soldier on his hands, which spoke well of the entire collective if Linda was an average.

Within a few more steps he arrived at the destination he had arbitrarily chosen at the landing, and now he felt glad that he had. Underneath a sheet metal, curved roof was a veritable smorgasbord of metal parts, which looked to be numerous Samson transports in various states of disassembly and several of those AMP suits he had seen in action. Here and there he could even peer into the labyrinthine metallic guts of the devices. The people scattered about the area seemed to be doing work with the mechanisms, though what exactly that work was he could not, at present, say.

He felt, presence-wise, his escort beside him and aired the appropriate query. "**So, now that we are here, would you care to explain to me what exactly I am looking at?**"

Diligently, his guide explained to him the function of the area while he kept looking about with the same sort of fascination that you would find in a newborn child put amongst a field of building blocks. He was not at all ashamed of the allusion; instead it was a burning goad to his curiosity. He wanted to understand it all, how all of these disparate pieces combined to make a hunk of metal fly, how they made an armored walker with enough firepower to smear Navi bodies across the landscape with a single round. His urge to knuckle down and immediately start puzzling out the intricacies of everything he could see was almost overpowering, but regrettably he still had much more of Hell's Gate to see if his assessment of the size was any indication.

Coincidentally, just as he reached that thought Linda finished her explanation of the repair hangar and voiced a question for him. "So, now where do you want to go?"

He thought for a moment, silently tapping his chin as he weighed his options. "**Perhaps, ah, why don't you show me to where you and the others congregate when off duty? I can only imagine the rumors that are flying after the conclusion of this war you've all been fighting.**"

The woman gave him a flat glare, a spark of defiance springing to life in her eyes. "Rumors about the war and how it ended, or rumors about you?"

He chuckled, a long low one that quenched the spark so recently ignited. "**Both could be amusing, particularly the latter.**" He made a shooing motion with his left hand. "**Now lead on, I wish to arrive before the sunset you seem to be desiring so dearly comes to pass.**"

Grumbling various obscenities relating to his mother and crude sexual references Linda did as he asked and set off directly towards the main building. A square door of green metal slid open as she approached, one through which he was required to duck, which led the both of them into a small boxy chamber that sealed itself off half a moment after he stepped in. He was momentarily wary of the confined space, before he heard a hiss and watched a similar door open ahead of him. A glance towards his guide revealed something else; Linda had removed the mask, which led him to believe that the air was now breathable for normal humans. He drew in a draught of the ether through his nose, noting the lack of an acrid bite like outside, but this was replaced by a metallic taste that he could not describe.

His escort spoke a line that he only half-heard, which was fine since she sounded like she was talking to herself anyway. "Now, normally we'd go that way to get to the mess hall, but it's shorter to cut through here…"

He looked to the right, observing a pair of armed soldiers guarding what looked to be a security checkpoint, or at least his understanding of one. Though it seemed odd to him that, if they were attacked by an opponent wielding a gun they would have no chance of evading any shots fired. He didn't tend to think in those terms, but he supposed it was only natural considering the amount of carnage he had seen unleashed in the form of a storm of lead. To his left through a screen of glass was, something else.

He reached forward and seized hold of Linda's shoulder, bringing them both to a dead stop outside of a room filled with what looked to be tables with curved roofs. That in and of itself was strange, but the two people in the room were far more interesting. One was someone he knew, or at least knew of, Colonel Quaritch, and from his current perspective he had a grand view of the pale scars that adorned the side of the Colonel's head, three parallel lines that could have come from a lion, provided that the lion was several times larger than usual. The other person was a woman, a plainly clothed red-headed woman with frizzy hair. Normally he wouldn't bat an eye at two people meeting alone like this. But this was an exception because the two looked locked in a heated, though that was probably a gross understatement, argument that was oddly silent due to the glass separating the pair from him and Linda.

Most people would try to silently slink away, but he wasn't most people. He reached up and, against the sudden verbal objection of his escort, knocked his knuckles against the glass. Both persons immediately took notice, and seemed both extraordinarily perturbed and half-grateful for the interruption.

Colonel Quaritch was the first to snap at him, predictably. "The hell are you doing back here Sergeant, this area is off limits to civilians and you know that."

Before his escort could answer he held up a hand, silencing the blonde before she could dig her theoretical grave. "**You should leave her out of this, and forget about why I am standing here. Instead, I would much rather you fill me in on just what it is that the two of you are so riled up about.**"

Quaritch leveled a withering glare at him that could have melted a hole in iron. "Not a chance. You may have been damn helpful on the Plains of Goliath but that doesn't mean you have any actual authority-"

He interrupted the Colonel with a single word, "**Stop.**" Once his fresh, malevolent tone had set in he continued. "**Now let me be perfectly clear. You, your soldiers, this base, indeed everything on this entire planet continue to exist only because I deign to allow them to endure. I have been most accommodating of your security measures up until now, and indeed far more polite than a man of my station is required to be.**" He leaned forward to go eye to eye with the Colonel, bringing up his right fist and setting it ablaze. "**Remember to whom you are speaking, a man that slaughtered an entire Navi home tree single-handed without so much as a scratch to show for it; a man that deigned to defer to you as a gesture of good faith. Well now it is time for that investment to come to fruition, so I am going to ask you one more time and I expect to be taken seriously, what is the issue?**"

Quaritch, to his significant credit, did not apparently crack at the ultimatum, but there was a miniscule mote of acquiescence in the grizzled soldier's gaze that told him his words had found their mark. "Fine…" Even in defeat the Colonel sounded defiant. "Doctor Grace and I were just, discussing her extremely loose regard for the chain of command. She sent in a request for a new Avatar program over a year ago, without following procedure, and said personnel are due in late tomorrow."

The red-head, Doctor Grace, matched Quaritch's glare, but instead directed it towards the Colonel. "And as I have explained numerous times, I had to take precautions considering Commander Falco's idiotic handling of the Navi relations. Speaking of which…" The doctor turned her attention toward him. "You're the one who massacred the Timpani? Congratulations, you just set back our attempts to get along with the rest of the Navi by leaps and bounds."

He bowed low, mockingly, and acidic sarcasm laced his next words. "**The pleasure was all mine.**" Taking his serious tone again he directed his next forceful query towards the same person. "**Now, this 'Avatar program,' the details if you don't mind.**"

Grace had clearly given this speech before and it showed with her droll tone. "It's our outreach attempt to the Navi. Most of them can't stand humans-" Quaritch and Linda interrupted with a loud cough that resembled the phrase "no shit" but the doctor seemed to choose to ignore them both. "… So we work around that. Certain people are set up with an avatar, a Navi body grown with human DNA, so we can interact with the Navi on their terms."

He blinked a few times as he tried to process the idea, and ultimately failed. "**Not to be rude out of hand, but that is the most idiotic idea I have ever heard of.**"

For the first time, he saw an actual smile appear on Quaritch's face. "You see, even the 'Overlord' thinks it's a fools errand."

Doctor Grace glowered at the both of them. "Duly noted, the mass murderer thinks peace is a bad idea." Within heartbeats of finishing the jab at his actions the doctor stormed out of the room.

A moment of silence passed, one which was broken, surprisingly, by the Colonel, "Look…" It was obvious that what Quaritch was about to say was going to be a wound to the man's towering pride, but depending on the content it might prove an adequate olive branch. "…I'm going to say this as plain as I can. I can't trust you, but I can respect you. Come morning you may wander around as you please, just try not to interfere with the men, alright?"

He made a show of debating with himself, even though he had already accepted the tentative peace offering. "**This is acceptable, at least for now.**" He extended his right hand, dousing the flame that still danced around the arcanium metal. "**Although I do not in any way expect you to reign in your surveillance efforts.**"

Quaritch shook the offered hand with a neutral look on his face. "I never offered to end it."

He chuckled as the Colonel exited the room, following the soldier with his eyes like an eagle would watch a hawk. "**So you didn't Colonel, so you didn't.**" He glanced towards Linda, who looked a little flummoxed with the entire situation. "**You may lead me to whichever quarters you had set aside for me. I'm sure that in the aftermath of this conflict there are quite a few empty rooms.**"

The blunt reminder of the past, and possibly future, engagement seemed to lend the Sergeant a fresh breath of vitality, if tempered by a modicum of fear. "Yeah, sure. This way."

A short distance into the warren of hallways, two left turns and a right to be exact, the woman spoke up again, sounding vaguely angry this time. "Ok, seriously, why are you with us at all? And don't feed me that line about us being polite or something."

He found himself chuckling again, silently commending Linda for having the stomach to demand an answer of him. "**You wish to hear the truth? Very well, I hate elves. And I really mean HATE them.**" He held up a hand to ward off the obligatory objection. "**I am quite aware that the Navi are not elves, but they are both built accordingly and possess the same attitude; supremely arrogant and nature loving.**"

The blonde cocked a single eyebrow at him as she continued walking. "You don't think that's just a little hypocritical of you? You did just essentially threaten to wipe out the entire planet by yourself."

He was quick to respond to this. "**Ah, you mean the arrogant aspect then. No, I do not believe so. My godly powers are not something I take particular pleasure in utilizing, it makes things far too boring. The almost literal ocean of fire I summoned to incinerate the Timpani home tree, it was more to cut off the escape of any Navi than cause any additional harm. To be sure I did throw about some smaller fountains of flame, but honestly how could I not? The smell of a freshly burned corpse is exhilarating.**" A smile stretched across his face. "**Regardless, the crux of what I am saying is that it is far more satisfying for a being of my station to willingly limit himself and the extent of power that he brings to bear. That does not change the fact, and it is indeed fact, that I easily could exterminate all life on this planet within an hour or two, depending on what kind of mood I was in.**"

Linda shook her head as they both slowed to a stop. "I'll tell you, I find it hard to believe, but you just say it so matter-of-factly that I can't help it." The woman hit a small square panel on the wall and a metal slab slid up into the ceiling. "There you go, and I hope you don't mind me saying that I'm glad to be getting away from you."

His smile persisted, only broadening at the admission of discomfort in his presence. "**Not at all, though just one thing before you leave.**" He gestured towards the interior of the room. "**I'm sure this room has a viewing device of some kind hidden away. You wouldn't happen to know where that is would you?**"

Obligingly, the blonde ducked inside and pointed to the back left corner of the small chamber. "Right up there, every room has one." The sergeant took a step or two back. "I guess I'll be seeing you around, and I seriously hope no one gives you reason to use those godly powers you're supposed to have."

He nodded once to the retreating figure. "**Likewise, have a pleasant evening.**"

With two steps he was inside the chamber, noting immediately that the door slid down behind him and would not respond to an action similar to the one Linda had used to open it. So they thought that he was locked up, whatever helped them sleep soundly. His critical eye turned towards the space itself then, taking in and approving of the Spartan aesthetic, the unadorned walls, the simple cot bed that stood no chance of supporting the weight of him and his armor, and of course the tiny black, reflective dot in the indicated spot that would seem to be the little spy on him.

He turned to stare directly at the object, whatever it was, and spoke aloud. "**Now, I must wonder if this thing works both ways. Can you respond to me or must I stand here with only my own thoughts to entertain me?**"

After a few moments there was a crackling sound and a female voice responded. "I suppose. Technically I'm not supposed to but since you already know I'm here, I don't see why not."

His left eyebrow twitched upwards as he recognized the voice. "**Ah, Lisa Ryder was it not? Intriguing, one of the two war heroes reduced to spying? A travesty indeed.**" After a moment's pause during which they both got in a small laugh at the hyperbole he decided to dive at one of the few mysteries still obscured to him. "**Tell me something Lisa, the Navi chief Swanta mentioned the RDA, could you explain to me what they are and their purpose?**"

The "Sig Spec" responded immediately. "Well that's easy. Every human person on this planet is part of the RDA, Resource Development Administration. Technically we're all here for a mining operation, mining a metal called unobtanium, but the Navi don't like that, hence the recent war and the tension before."

He got another laugh out of the name of the mineral, and he voiced his thoughts on it. "**Unobtanium'? How amusingly quaint. I do hope it is quite important.**"

The female Ryder took a moment to get back to him on that. "Well, I know it's worth at least twenty million per unrefined kilo, and over forty million refined. Other than that, we need it for the continued survival of humanity. The Earth is just too small for all of humanity to fit anymore, so we're striking out for the stars."

He absorbed this silently, marveling at the idea and wondering just how many years ahead of his time he had wound up. "**Fascinating. I suppose that makes the term 'the sky's the limit' rather outdated then?**"

The sig spec shot back. "You can joke about it if you want, but this is a serious problem. It's why I couldn't bring myself to sympathize with the Navi when I had the chance."

Something about the objection struck him as odd, and he drove at it. "**Hold a moment, what do you mean by 'when you had the chance?' I wasn't aware the Navi were keen on allowing humans into their homes.**"

Lisa relented after a long pause. "They aren't, but at the time I was in the avatar program. Doctor Harper, the man that used to be in charge, he tried to convince me to betray the RDA and everyone else, even my brother. I couldn't do that."

He nodded once. "**I see, and I imagine that all of your fellows are quite glad of the fact that you didn't, particularly in light of your service record during the war if a Navi chief is to be believed.**" A short laugh escaped him. "**Well, much obliged Miss Ryder, I do believe that all of my pressing questions have been answered. I think I'll take my leave.**"

The sig spec sounded justifiably confused. "But, you're locked in. Sergeant Wright was given specific instructions to-"

He broke in, cutting of the young woman. "**I do not doubt it. But one of the first things you and your superiors should learn about me, after my destructive potential, is that physical walls present little to no challenge for me. I will return on the morrow, perhaps I will run across you then.**"

Ignoring the outburst of his hidden observer he held up his left hand and opened a portal home directly beneath the observation device, in a spot where he should be able to vanish unseen.

Netherworld: Private Quarters

Isabella "Ivy" Valentine found herself in a bit of a situation, not a serious one by any means but still one that distressed her a little bit. She had an elf strung up in the freshly formed torture chamber to "break the place in" and she seemed to have misplaced some of her favorite implements. Certainly she could just wait and find the tools at her leisure but she had never been a particularly patient woman, less so when she hadn't been able to exercise her bloodlust in a decent stretch of time. So her search had led her to her current spot, rummaging through the trunk she kept at the foot of her new bed, searching for the little, leather bound package of joy that had earned her the questionable title of "resident sadist."

Out of nowhere a warm metal gauntlet descended upon her shoulder, while a voice uttered a single word in her ear, "**Boo.**"

Unable to help herself she let out a mighty scream and threw herself away, tumbling to the left of her bed before coming up to her feet and facing the intruder, Erasmus, who was now laughing his head off.

She scowled and crossed her arms. "Ugh, remind me to slap Taki for teaching you so well. I'd be better off having an extra set of eyes than trying to hear you or her."

Her husband bowed low and made a grand sweeping motion with his right hand. "**I'll be certain to pass along your backhanded praise when next I speak with her.**"

A sigh escaped her. "Ugh, you are just as incorrigible as ever." A swift change of topic brought a smile to her face. "Anyway, what did you find on your little trip? Anything exciting? Anything dangerous?"

The God of Evil only continued to laugh. "**Oh, you know, a little bit of war, a little bit of mass slaughter; good times. Now that I think of it, perhaps I ought to make an effort to catch one of my new foes for you to play with. I'm sure it would be quite enlightening for the both of us. I could apply the knowledge and share it with my 'allies' and you, well, you'd just have a horrendous amount of fun.**"

She returned the laugh. "Well that does sound nice. Why don't we just go along right now then and…" She reached for her sword, Valentine, only to find herself grabbing at nothing but air. "What? Now where did it-"

Erasmus's tone took on a more sinister note. "**What's the matter dear? Would you happen to be looking for this?**" Between the first two digits of his left hand the god was twirling Valentine like it was a toy.

She shot a glance down at the hip she usually wore the sword on, noting that the clasp was still closed. "How, how did you manage to…"

A devious glint appeared in her husband's eyes that drew her to silence as Erasmus unwound her weapon to its full length and coiled the bladed end around his right hand. "**I think, my bloody little flower, the more pressing question you should be asking is 'what am I going to do with your precious sword now that I have it?' As for the how, well, I think you've already blamed her enough for one night.**" With one sharp motion the man drew the bladed cable taught, producing a loud cracking sound that automatically made her wince. "**Now you might want to prepare yourself…**" One of his trademark explosive winks shot her way. "**… Because daddy's hungry.**"


	4. One in the Chamber

Chapter 4: One in the Chamber

RDA Hell's Gate: Flight Landing

Nick Ryder let out a grand yawn as he stepped out of the main building, coating the inside of his Exo-pack mask with a fine mist in the cool early morning. Well, cool relatively for Pandora. That was the thing about a tropical planet, no real relief from the heat anywhere. By now he was well used to it, not to mention the other things that messed with him when he first touched down about a year ago. The lower gravity for one thing, played hell with his footing on anything other than dirt. The thick air, made him feel like he was running into a thirty mile an hour headwind. Say nothing of the natives. He couldn't take a piss in the woods without touching something sacred and getting shot at. In light of that he'd all but given up on taking his morning jog around the exterior wall, and so was limited to running around the edge of the flight deck, the largest open space he could find. Sure there were treadmills in the rec room, but it just wasn't the same as feeling the wind hitting him. It was a great pity then that he couldn't breathe that wind in.

He made a sharp, ninety degree turn to the left and set off at a heavy pace, which would be considered downright mild back on Earth, bound for the repair hangar. He imagined that, by now, his sister's AMP suit would be back in top shape, considering that her suit had been given a generous priority over the other grunts in light of her results. He glanced to his left as he passed by the wide open door, and what he saw made him slow down almost to a standstill. There was no mistaking the black armored giant that was sitting with his back to the door, holding an arc welder, and tracing a jagged line across what looked like a section of aircraft fuselage.

Curiosity pulled him in like a fish on a line, and he found himself speaking almost before he knew it. "What the hell is going on here?"

The loud buzzing sound he associated with welding stopped, and the Overlord twisted his head around to lock eyes. "**Ah, Nick, I believe a good morning is in order, yes?**" The red-eyed man set the torch down and stood, pivoting on the ball of his right foot to face him fully. "**One quick thing I thought of before we carry on, is Nick an abbreviation of Nicholas?**"

Suddenly put on the spot he scratched the back of his head awkwardly while he answered. "Well, yeah. My parents named me after my grandfather."

Erasmus gave one curt nod. "**Quaint. I suppose they named your sister after your grandmother then.**" Before he could react to the comment the Overlord waved it off. "**Ah, no matter, it was just an idle curiosity. Speaking of, didn't you say something of the same nature when you entered just now?**"

Still off his figurative balance he agreed. "Yes, I'm just surprised to see you out here, working even. I thought what with you being a big 'Overlord' and all you'd be above manual labor."

The man's red eyes glittered malevolently. "**Nonsense. When would one ever call learning working? I think by now I've touched up just about everything in here that needed attention. After, of course, a few hours of close observation and questioning.**"

Leery of the notion still, he let out a whistle and called to the garage head, by nick name. "Hey Sparky, you have anything to say about this?"

A loud clang off to the right, among a pile of scrap metal, followed by a groan of exasperation was the immediate response. Moments later, the bedraggled form of the chief engineer clambered out of the heap and stumbled over towards the two of them. Johnny "Sparky" Chandler, was so named due to the uncanny knack the man had for electrical work, and the equally uncanny number of times the brown-haired blue-eyed man had wound up getting electrocuted. Popular opinion around the mess hall was that all of that voltage had unhinged something, but that was mostly baseless trash talk, at least that's what most of them hoped.

The jittery tech expert glanced between him and the Overlord. "What lad, you got a problem with me letting the big guy mess around while I work on my art?"

He silently shook his head. Johnny liked to use scrap metal to fabricate elaborate statues and such, "building beauty out of junk" the guy said. Most everyone else still considered it junk.

With a sigh he gestured towards the aircraft in the hangar. "Me personally? Not at all. But you know how picky the pilots are, they won't like it that a guy that's probably never held a torch in his life is the one doing all the welding."

The engineer waved the valid concern off like it was a gnat. "Relax. I don't know how and I don't care, but this guy's got steadier nerves than me when I'm black out drunk. Everything's up to par, I checked a few times before I went off on my own."

Still not content with letting the matter rest he raised another objection. "Ok, but has he only been working on wings and patch jobs? I know my sister, for one, would be royally pissed if something glitched out with her AMP suit because this guy didn't know what he was doing."

This simply got a chuckle out of the red eyed giant. "**Objection noted, but irrelevant. While I may dearly wish to, as you put it, 'know what I am doing' in regards to those fascinating machines I am only able to fully digest so much knowledge at once. Saying that though, I plan on getting my start on, what did you say Johnny, 'electrical engineering' on the morrow.**"

The engineer nodded. "That's what I said. But if you don't mind, could I have a few more hours of sleep before you start knocking on my door? Free time's all well and good, but I'd rather still be asleep while it's dark out."

The Overlord extended a hand, which the engineer readily shook. "**Perfectly agreeable, and it will allow me the time to pursue that reading you suggested. I bid you a pleasant day.**" After Sparky had vanished into the scrap pile again Erasmus uttered a comment at a slightly lower volume. "**He seems a decent sort, and far be it of me to criticize a man's artistic pursuits, but I find it mildly disturbing the attention he lavishes on those crude sculptures. He calls his latest piece 'Monica,' though I cannot see a single feminine feature on that amalgam of metal.**"

He suppressed a laugh at the observation. "Yeah, welcome to our world. We've been dealing with him for years."

Erasmus gestured towards him. "**Speaking of your world, I must note that it is currently quite early considering. To what end are you up at this hour?**"

He shrugged nonchalantly. "Just a morning run. I try to get a few laps in before the rest of the base wakes up and I have to dodge through crowds. What can I say; I'm a bit of a loner."

The Overlord nodded once. "**I can't fault a man for that.**" A loud clang and cry of pain from the scrap pile momentarily drew both of their attentions, before Erasmus continued. "**Well, I'm not going to keep you from your calisthenics, and I do believe I am done here for the day. So one thing before you run off.**" The man's red eyes acquired a certain Evil glimmer. "**Would you do me the favor of directing me towards your armory? I find myself itching to get my hands on one of these guns I keep seeing around me.**"

He felt the urge to poke fun, and gave in to it. "If I don't you're just going to nag someone else to do it. So…" He pointed to the closest door inside. "Go through there and head straight till you come to the third right turn, take that and the second left and you'll be at the armory."

The red eyed giant chuckled, and gave off the impression that a malevolent smirk was hiding beneath the helmet. "**You know me better than you think by saying that.**" The man's right hand rose up and what looked to be arcs of black lightning jumped from finger to finger. "**Though there would be no 'nagging' from me, just a simple command.**"

A chill shot through him despite the warm air as The Overlord strode off and vanished inside the base. "The fuck did he mean by that?"

RDA Hell's Gate: Compound Interior

Erasmus hummed a simple tune to himself as he navigated through the relatively cramped interior of the military, though really mining, outpost towards the current object of his eye. Guns, far and beyond the flintlock pistols Acheron had grown so fond of. He had never really gotten to get a feel for the mechanics of the weapons, apart from firing one on two single occasions, both to rather anticlimactic results. However, from what he had seen on the Plains of Goliath he could expect a vastly different result, speed and accuracy that would make any of those pirate hooligans Acheron cavorted with green with envy, power to match that of a ship cannon, or so he could hope. Realistically he still expected a fairly uncomplicated piece of metal that rapidly displaced smaller chunks of metal at something and for that something to quickly bleed to death.

At the doorway to what he had been told was the armory he paused, gazing inside at the caged area within. Beyond that holy barrier he could see row upon row of murder devices, all that was left was to get let in, or let himself in depending upon the situation. A young man sat behind a part of the screen, scratching away on what looked to be a piece of paper with a pencil and, while a part of him was naturally curious as to what the boy was occupying himself with, he decided to focus on the more important matter that he had sort of put off.

He took two steps forward, inside the armory, and began to open his mouth to speak, but supposedly at the sound of his boot steps the young man spoke up and beat him to the first word. "No you are not getting into the armory, under any circumstances."

He was momentarily stunned into silence. Not only was the young man being insufferably rude by not even doing the decent thing by looking at whom he was speaking to, but he had the nerve to add a note of derision to the words. Clearly, an attitude adjustment was in order, to be effected immediately.

One more step brought him within spitting distance of the boy, wire screen included. "**Really, and on whose authority do you say that?**"

The boy looked up, realized at last whom he had been speaking with, and unconsciously jerked away from the wire mesh separating them. "What the fu…" The young man rallied, presumably drawing upon the diminutive position he held as authority. "My own, and that's all you need to know."

A dark chuckle slipped between his lips. "**Is that so? You look to be little more than a Private, cannon fodder, disposable. A boy of your station should really learn to respect their betters, and if not respect, then at least have the sense to not be blatantly dismissive.**" He held up a single finger of his right hand, crackling with black lightning. "**Consider this brief moment to follow as a lesson for all future encounters in your life.**"

Confusion danced across the soldier's face for a moment, before the power of the Evil Presence spell was unleashed. The victim convulsed, twitching wildly atop whatever seating he was using with all the coordination of a zombie. Yet, despite what most normal people would call a horrifying show of pain all was quiet. The boy could not scream of the agony he was in, nor would they be able to unless he allowed it. Slowly, as he actually applied the purpose of the spell, the young soldier's head bent to the countertop in perfect tandem with the finger that mirrored and conveyed the motion. And there he waited, allowing the boy to suffer in silence while the black lightning arced between his crooked finger and the victim's head. It occurred to him that he could easily turn the insolent boy into ash, with just a twitch he could overcharge the spell and end it, and indeed the thought alone was enough to cause a few small flakes of flesh to start a migration to the floor instead of remaining where they were natural. But he abstained, as useless of a person this was they still had a practical purpose, and he wasn't about to go pawing through the vast assortment of guns by himself.

He released the spell, taking satisfaction in the lingering, subtle halo of black light that danced playfully about the young man's head. "**You will admit me to the armory.**"

Wordlessly, and without any tangible signs of resistance, the fresh thrall obeyed. The single swinging door in the wire screen was opened silently, and he entered, silent himself. His only action beyond that was to point off to the warren of gun stands and think a command to his mind-slave, the order to bring out the biggest, most destructive gun that a man would carry.

As his slave moved to obey, back hunched over and will completely broken, he was reminded of the few times since his initial conquest of his home world that he had used Evil Presence for any real reason. Reasonably, what came to mind first was his first encounter with Sophitia, now his second wife. She had, even when the cloak of the spell had fallen fully, never completely surrendered, and he imagined had he not willingly freed her moments after completing the binding she would be fighting his domination still. This was funny in a way, since occasionally Isabella would air a quip about Sophitia that the Greek woman had a weak will, which was clearly proven wrong by that single instance alone. The boy he had just enslaved was clearly the opposite and an accurate target for the comment, a coward and a weakling.

His mind was pulled out of his musings by the harsh clack sound he had learned to associate with the modern guns around him. Looking down, he gazed upon a large, light orange device with five firing tubes spaced closely together. In fact, it looked to be the exact same kind of weapon Nick Ryder had been wielding upon their first encounter at the Timpani home tree. He even remembered vaguely the effect when it was fired, a tremendous amount of noise and rattling from the gun itself. As he had not been paying full attention he did not know what that meant for the accuracy of the gun.

He lightly took the gun from his thrall and held it up to the light, examining the burnt orange finish with a critical eye. "**Explain the function of this gun for me.**"

His mind-slave responded promptly, in a low, monotone manner. "The M60 machine gun is used for medium range fire support in large engagements. It has a modest accuracy and high penetrating power."

Mildly intrigued, he lightly tossed the weapon to his left hand and held it out straight by the trigger. It was surprisingly light considering, although that could simply be attributed to his plainly inhuman levels of strength. Quite honestly though, he felt like with one wrong move he could snap the gun in half like a twig, likening it to a giant trying to knit with a human sized needle.

With a ginger motion he handed the weapon back to his thrall, sideways, as it had presented to him. "**Perhaps something heavier, something that might require a team of men, or one of those fascinating mechanical suits outside?**"

The young man blankly accepted the gun and trudged back into the warren of gun racks, returning in only a moment dragging a much larger weapon, this one with only one noticeable hole for the bullets. Encouragingly, the thrall seemed to be struggling a great deal to simply move the thing, which bode well for destructive potential.

He relieved the boy of the firearm and propped the back end of the gun against his shoulder, mimicking the posture he had observed on the Plains of Goliath. "**And this one?**"

The boy sucked in a lungful of breath first, clearly exhausted by shifting the gun even the relatively short distance. "The GAU-90 machine gun fires, fires 30 millimeter armor piercing shells. It is mounted on the AMP suits for heavy combat…"

He felt a light smile drift across his face as he listened to the droning voice of the enslaved soldier. If this was the gun that the mechanical suits used, then it was also the one that ripped Navi bodies apart with only a single hit. The heft of the weapon, while still minimal, was enough that he didn't feel like he was holding a twig, and his armored hands fit quite comfortably around the trigger and against the body.

He held up a hand and silenced his rambling slave. "**This gun will do nicely. You will provide me with the appropriate ammunition and I shall take my leave. Then I may decide to release you.**"

With a noticeably more motivated stride his thrall raced off to perform the command.

Pandoran Jungle: An hour later

Erasmus Killgore cut a leisurely pace through the deep brush of the forest floor; borrowed gun held loosely in his iron grasp. Every once in a while he would hear a sound or catch a glimpse of something that would draw his attention, but this venture had proven largely silent so far, and inevitably his mind sought other things to occupy it, like the astonished look on the face of the woman that had been standing atop the surrounding wall of Hell's Gate when he simply vaulted the entire thing and half-flew by her. He contemplated the bullets, or rounds as he had occasionally heard, that he carried for the "GAU-90" in a large backpack, each round as large as his index finger. He fantasized about the carnage that his appropriated armament could cause, replaying the images from the Plains of Goliath in his mind of blue limbs explosively sundered from torsos in a shower of vital fluid, of ivory bone splintered like wood as it gleamed through gaping chest wounds. A crass, fairly loud chortle escaped him that sent a verdant shower of birds skyward. He was getting far ahead of himself.

A rustle in the brush to his left drew his gaze automatically. This fortunately meant he caught the appearance of one of the six-legged dog-like animals he had seen before and, due to a combination of eavesdropping and over-the-shoulder reading he now knew the appropriate name for the beast, a viperwolf. He imagined that a single round would be enough to kill the small pack animal, but he let the thing scamper off into the denser greenery. He wanted something bigger, an apex predator or a powerful prey, something he could proudly mount on his wall. Something like the lion he had killed on the continent of Africa with his bare hands, the lion which had unwillingly donated its claws and teeth to the necklace that Acheron wore. He had yet to learn the appropriate analogue to a lion on Pandora, but he wished it would arrive shortly.

Sensing his eagerness for blood Soul Edge whispered to him. "_If it is death you lust after there is a much swifter route to take._"

He halted his forward progress and shot a glare over his shoulder at the eye of the crimson greatsword. "**Like what, going back to Hell's Gate and decapitating all of those nearly helpless people? No thanks, I would rather try my hand at slaying a giant animal that might actually take a smidgeon of effort.**" He raised the GAU-90 in front of him and ran through a quick mental checklist, making doubly sure that the firearm was in proper working order. "**I know it is essentially your only calling, driving your wielder to commit heinous acts of brutality against their better judgment, but you really could try to be a little more subtle about it. And learn to choose your battles, some issues are simply not open for debate and give me the notion that I should simply lock you away in my armory for a spell if you continue to grate on my nerves.**"

Soul Edge, never particularly chatty even when it was trying to goad him to violence, predictably remained silent following his reprimand. However, something else seemed to have picked up on the brief conversation, as a slight shifting of brush alerted him to something moving towards him, and directly from the front so they were brazen to boot. He waited, dropping to one knee to become partially hidden by the dense foliage, in the same motion he brought the GAU-90 gun up to his shoulder, right index finger tensing on the trigger as he aligned the iron sight up with where he thought his unseen quarry would emerge. Silence fell, and for a long while it seemed as if he had simply imagined the noise. But just as he was relaxing his grip on the gun a large, lithe mass of black burst from the foliage. The creature was swift as well, as it was on him before he could properly bring the gun to back to position, latching a feline set of jaws shut on the metal weapon.

His temper spiked a little at this development, as he was quite sure that if he had been bearing his blade as he normally was he would not be on his back with a large predator trying to rip his throat out. This seemed to be a glaring flaw in the concept of high-mass guns, at least to him, that a close range target could easily out-maneuver the gunman. Still, things weren't all that bad, he had his apex predator in all likelihood and the means to kill it at his disposal. With a slight grunt of aggression he brought his legs up in unison and kicked the animal off of him. The beast roared with anger as it tumbled, conveniently flattening a good deal of the surrounding brush in the process. It was also only now that he realized that there had been a Navi riding the beast, which had been displaced by the impact and was righting itself as he watched.

Without wasting even half a second he brought the gun up again, pulling the trigger and hearing the rhythmic explosive sound of a bullet discharge. He was certain that his aim, insofar as the sight on the top of the gun was concerned, was unerring, but his inhuman reflexes allowed him the indignity of watching the heavy rounds sail wide to the left, the right, up, or down into the dirt beneath him, everywhere except where he wanted them to go. So the alien feline closed with him again, but this time he was ready, and brought his right hand, still clutching the stock of his appropriated gun, forward in a sharp strike that deflected the inertia of the charging predator off to his left. Following this action with a swift jerk of his head to avoid the clumsy strike of the Navi rider was enough to keep him unscathed, but he was still quite annoyed at the abject failure of his weapon to perform thus far. Then again, he shouldn't blame the gun. There could be a million and one reasons why his shots were missing that had nothing to do with the hunk of metal in his hands, but that was not what it felt like.

The predator rushed him again, and once more he attempted to plant one of the heavy rounds of the GAU-90 in the body of either the Navi rider or its mount, the former of which was not likely as the blue native was lying flat against the animal and hiding behind a vibrant flower-shaped fringe or crest that surrounded the animal's neck. This time though he got lucky, in the middle of one of the rushing predator's loping motions a bullet from his weapon finally sailed true and punctured the top of the animal's head just in front of the crest with a titillating explosion of gore, presumably including pieces of brain matter. The momentum of the corpse carried it forward still and it plowed face first in the dirt, or it would if it still had what one could call a face, and the crumpling of the lifeless mass threw the Navi up, where the native snatched a conveniently located branch and swung still higher into the lower branches of the great trees. Instead of running though, this Navi drew its bow and fired back.

Slightly surprised by the accuracy of such a quickly made shot he turned his head to the left to protect his face from the arrow, but he miscounted the deflection effect of his helmet, which drove the point of the oversized arrow down into the top of his collarbone. Now, it was not as if he had never been poisoned before, his fourth wife Taki had applied a rather potent dose to him during one of her assassination attempts some years ago, but the flood of burning that rushed through his body was stronger by an order of magnitude. He was forced to bite his lower lip to stifle the roar of pain that threatened to burst forth, and that was a slap to his professional pride.

He turned his gaze upwards at the Navi, who seemed quite stunned that the poison on the arrow had not succeeded in killing a hit target, and uttered raw malevolence. "**That, my naive forest friend, was the worst mistake you could possibly make.**"

Acting out of sheer reflex he drew his left arm back and hurled the GAU-90 like a spear, rather lightly all things considered, tearing the ammo belt and arm sling like paper. The weapon flew true, and impaled the Navi hunter, knocking it from its perch like a bird off of a fence and causing it to land face up on the dead body of its former mount.

He stalked forward and braced his boot against the rapidly dying alien, just so he could remove the gun, and did so before resting the barrel against the Navi's forehead. "**Let my words of self-adulation be the last thing you hear as you die.**" A demonic snarl twisted his lips as he quoted himself."**Hail to the king, baby.**"

The Navi's androgynous features, contorted as they already were with agony, were mangled still further as he pulled the trigger on the resting gun. It seemed to happen in slow motion, the front of the skull caving in as the bullet bore through, the spontaneous eruption, or perhaps blooming, of the crown as grey brain matter mixed with flecks of alabaster bone spattered the surrounding greenery and his armor, the wet, explosive crunch sound that accompanied the visceral imagery, it was all utterly delightful, and a balm to his bruised ego. Certainly this entire encounter would have been much simpler had he been able to just place one solitary bullet in the Navi's head instead of shooting off dozens of misses before landing the one lucky blow. Was there a different gun that offered that kind of precision? He hoped so, because the just performed style of execution was nearly as satisfying as performing one with a blade.

He'd look into that once he returned to Hell's Gate, now that he had both essentially ruined his borrowed gun and the body of his trophy animal. No one wanted to see a neck without a head on someone's wall now did they?

Hell's Gate: Half an hour later

Linda Wright was starting to think she was cursed, more so now that magic was proven to exist by the arrival of that "Erasmus" fellow. She had very nearly been metaphorically decapitated by the Colonel for leading the Overlord through that restricted section of the base. Now, walking on eggshells was an understatement. It was more like she was walking on live landmines, with nothing stronger than a prayer keeping the mines from blowing. It had started during the conflict with the Timpani, a single little misstep with a botched recon mission that had left a superior officer dead. It hadn't been her fault that the guy couldn't run fast enough to outpace the Thanator, or that the predator had found the ranking sergeant more palatable than her. Then there was the ambush she had walked into in Graves Bog, this time a bunch of the nerds had gotten killed, and it still had not been her fault. Fifty something Navi against three soldiers and a bunch of unarmed geeks, it was laughably pathetic. And then there was her crowning achievement, putting her squad through the figurative meat grinder to save the single most incompetent soldier ever produced by humankind, Amanda Marsh. She had nothing personal against the girl, as Amanda was likely the sweetest person she had ever met, but that was exactly why she was a bad soldier. Two of her men had gotten killed pulling the cry-baby out of the fire, and she was reprimanded.

All of this brought her to the present moment, now there were TWO of them, and she made her displeasure quite clear. "So, am I to understand that you almost killed one of the people that found you?"

The new "guest" shrugged nonchalantly. "**She shot me, and the bitch is going to be fine. She might have an irrational fear of electricity from now on but that's hardly my problem.**"

A pounding headache made her head feel like it was about to split open like a log under an axe, and the smarmy new arrival wasn't doing her any favors. When that Evil God returned from whatever flight of fancy that had him vaulting over walls she was going to give that guy a piece of her mind, damn the possibility that she might be incinerated.


	5. He Who Strikes First

Chapter Five: He Who Strikes First…

Hell's Gate:

Erasmus Killgore did not think of himself as a man that held a grudge, simply due to the nature of how altercations which ended poorly ended up working out for him. If he was not satisfied with an outcome, he immediately devoted his full attention to the issue until either satisfaction was attained or the denier of such ceased to breathe. None of this however, could account for the foul mood he found himself in. No, that was attributed to his recent experience of having his gun fantasy crash and burn, so to speak. So far as he could tell, guns were a crude method of death dealing, and he liked to think of himself as something of a battlefield artist. Hence, he would be sticking with his blade and spells for the foreseeable future, unless he stumbled upon a more precise firearm that caught his fancy.

He started muttering to himself. "**Then again…**" He glanced down at the ruined gun in his left hand. "**Whoever said that I have to use one of the guns that these soldiers do? I could always just find a template that I like and make my own.**"

Momentarily satisfied with his intermediate solution, and his inquisitiveness placated by the non-dismissal of bullets, he emerged from the jungle within sight of the stone fortress that was Hell's Gate. Now, he could just vault the wall again, but he had a feeling that doing so would give the guard a heart attack, and it would save him the bother of cleaning that mess up to just walk through the front gate like a normal man.

Speaking of, the gate rather perplexed him. It was a large thing to be sure, rising to a height equal to the massive grey slabs to either side, but the entirety of the construction appeared to be metal mesh. That wouldn't stop him at a light jog, let alone the most primitive of siege weapons, a battering ram made of a fallen tree. Of course, perhaps the Navi wouldn't stoop to using one of their sacred trees in such a manner. But that still left the structure woefully inadequate for its stated purpose.

He walked up to the metal mesh and tapped the structure with the knuckles of his free hand, calling out as politely as he could to be admitted. "**Excuse me? I'd rather not frighten someone into an early grave today so opening the front gate would be most appropriate.**" Obligingly, the unseen person operating the contraption did as he asked. "**Much obliged.**"

Three steps forward he inhaled deeply, sucking in the toxic atmosphere for the smells in spite of the burning sensation the action lit in the depths of his nose. There was the smell of oil, likely emanating from the repair depot he had been tinkering in earlier in the morning. The light, pungent odor of human bodies, likely from that one or two soldiers that had awoken late and lacked the time for personal hygiene. But there was something else, something familiar, the smell of magic, which people had made quite clear was completely beyond the norm. Did he have a visitor from the Netherworld? His pulse, if his heart had still been beating, would have been racing with excitement.

A hail rang out that drew his gaze to his left, to the burly form of Nick Ryder jogging towards him. "Hey, you have impeccable timing, you know that? Sergeant Linda was just about to go ballistic, literally, on our new 'guest.' I figured that you would know them, so I pulled rank and ordered her to back off." The man hesitated for a moment. "I was right, right? I didn't make an ass out of myself for no reason?"

As amusing as it might have been to watch the assault specialist sweat it out over his decision, he dispensed with any delay. "**Indeed you did, now take me to this 'friend' of mine posthaste. I am quite eager to know who decided to come and pay me a visit from home.**"

Slyly, he lobbed his ruined gun off in the direction of the scrap heap before following the lieutenant. He also deliberately forced himself to not react when a cry of pain erupted, accompanied by the loud crunch of breaking bone. Poor "Sparky," if he hadn't had so much free time he wouldn't have been pawing through the junk when the heavy chunk of metal fell. He would assume by the screaming that the engineer was still alive, which was good, he didn't want to go through the bother of winning the trust of Sparky Chandler's replacement.

A half step or so ahead of him, Lieutenant Ryder was expostulating on the visiting character. "… I tell you, even if you didn't know them I think I made the right call telling the sergeant to stand down. We led them to a small room like we did with you, just for security reasons. The bastard scared the shit out of me, walked right out through the wall like it wasn't even there. Not so much as a scratch on the metal either-"

He froze, right foot hovering in the air little more than an inch off the ground. "**Pardon me, but could you run that by me once more? He walked through the wall you said?**"

Nick started to answer and stopped. "Yeah that what I…" A moment passed before the lieutenant started again. "I, never said that it was a guy. I guess you do know him. Something wrong?"

The last words held a surprising amount of concern for someone that had no real reason to care, but he waved it off. "**No, no problem at all. Carry on if you would.**" Then he added under his breath, "**And yet there is.**"

While on the one hand he should, and slightly was, overjoyed that his son should be coming to call, that selfsame son was mostly the reason he was out here in the first place. To get some distance so he could think clearly on how to patch things up with Acheron. Back in the Netherworld the boy had made quite clear that any time they spent together was going to be forced. Still, he could not help but hope that his line of logic was faulty, could not help but hope that he was wrong.

Hell's Gate: Detention Center

Acheron Killgore leaned back against the wall, casually toying with the hilt of Soul Calibur while unabashedly ogling at the gun-toting chick the people on this planet had left behind to "keep an eye on him." He didn't have any particular designs for the bitch, after all she was the one who had shot at him and therefore wasn't his type. He was just leering to make her uncomfortable, and by the way she was squirming and shooting pleading glances towards the door every few seconds he would say that he was succeeding by leaps and bounds.

With an Evil smirk spreading across his face he opened his mouth, hidden beneath the sturdy durium helmet he had worn since his siege of Empire City. "**So, remind me again what your name is. Something that started with a 'b' right?**"

The girl went red in the face and pointed her gun at him. "If you call me bimbo again in any way shape or form I swear to god I will shoot you!"

Both he and the female sword clinging to his back started laughing. "**And that worked out for you the first time around, did it? How's that hair by the way, was looking rather frizzy last time I checked.**"

Soul Calibur chimed in. "_Can I shock her this time? Please, it was so much fun to watch her jump around when you did it._"

Predictably, the girl, whom was actually named something like Brenda, put her hands up and pointed the gun away from him. "Ok ok, just don't do that again, please."

Momentarily satisfied with his asshole-ery he simply chuckled and went back to leering. The Old Man would get here sooner or later and he could get his wretched duty out of the way. Then he could be back slugging rum in the sun in Evernight Resort before he could say "hot cakes." And of course, back on the beach he could ogle his mistresses in swimwear without anyone bitching at him. That was reward in and of itself.

A tiny little audio click off in the distance caught his ear, and a wry grin lit up his face. His godly father was indeed quiet, almost silent in fact, but metal falling on metal inevitably made some noise. It was a learned thing though, so it was extremely unlikely that anyone else around here was going to pick up on it. He turned his gaze towards the door, anticipating the Old Man's entrance. It took a few seconds longer than he thought it would, but the eventuality did arrive. His father entered slowly, as irritatingly composed as ever. All glittering black armor and infernal red eyes, the very image of Evil.

The Elder Overlord spoke first. "**Acheron, this, this is a surprise. What brings you out here so suddenly?**"

He shot back almost automatically. "**What, is there some kind of problem with me being here?**"

Before answering Erasmus turned a glare upon the other two people in the room, holding up a hand and igniting it. "**Both of you, leave or there will not be enough ashes left to fill a thimble.**" As soon as the soldiers had hurriedly complied the Old Man turned to him again. "**Not at all Acheron, but you seemed to make it quite clear at our last parting that you were decidedly not interested in spending any time whatsoever in my company.**"

The sword on his back answered this. "_Well, state the obvious why don't you? Hit the nail right on the head._"

He continued. "**Guilty as charged. But mom gave me the Evil eye until I said I'd come and visit you.**"

He was telling the truth, but only part of it. His mother had indeed all but ordered him to check in on his father, but she had also firmly suggested that he make a sincere effort at coming to some sort of an accord with good old Dad. Which essentially forbade him from going home in any span of time less than a week, but he didn't have to tell that to daddy dearest.

Erasmus let out a long sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose through the helmet. "**Ah Sophitia, bless your kind heart.**" The god looked up and his hands fell to his sides again. "**Look Acheron, I'm not going to force you to remain here if you truly wish to return to, whatever it was that you were doing before Sophitia ambushed you.**"

He was momentarily taken aback, and Soul Calibur just had to add her two cents to the whole thing within the confines of his skull. "_Well, that's frighteningly creepy. Didn't your mother say that he would say those exact words?_"

He ignored the talking sword, not because he thought she was out of line, far from it. He was shocked by how accurately his mother seemed to know his father, more, the other details she had spouted off afterwards that were mirrored in front of him. The miniscule downcast to the god's blazing red eyes, the infinitesimal slump to the elder man's shoulders, and there was even a tiny little gleam of reflected light partially hidden by the ridges of Erasmus's helmet. Holy hellfire, the man was emotionally crushed. The realization actually made him feel a little, well, a little guilty. It'd been what, a few months since he'd established full control over the World Government? And in that whole time he'd rebuffed every effort that his father had made to mend the rift between them.

Before he could say anything, and indeed betray his feelings, a light knock at the door preceded a young blonde woman sticking her head into their private room. "I'm sorry to interrupt, ah, sir, but the convoy out to the Blue Lagoon that you asked to be in on is leaving. I just, I figured you might want to know."

Erasmus half-turned to acknowledge the woman, voice betraying nothing. "**I did request that notification yesterday, didn't I? Very well, I will be along momentarily. Thank you for the consideration.**" The god waited for a good while after the woman had left before slowly gesticulating a portal home into existence with a tiny sigh. "**Well Acheron, it was good to see you, even if only for a few moments. Give my best regards to your mother, aunts, and sister.**" A moment passed before the elder Overlord added, "**And, I suppose to your wives as well. I regret that I have not had much time to get to know them yet, but I am sure that your judgment was sound when you chose them.**"

He silently mouthed the f-bomb while quickly thinking of how to spin the truth, both so he could maintain some sense of dignity and not disappoint his mother. "**Well, I mean I'm already here aren't I? And the trail on that treasure I was hunting has gone as cold as an elf's sex life, so, I guess there's really no reason I should be rushing back.**"

The nigh imperceptible dip in his father's helm vanished. "**Truly? Well, my sympathies for the hunt but…**" The amount of hesitation made readily apparent how surprised Erasmus was. "**I, don't suppose you have had much exposure to the local flora and fauna?**"

He shrugged, far more comfortable now that he wasn't stretching the truth anymore. "**Not really, the chick outside the door stumbled across me pretty damn quick after I got here. Like, five or so minutes after I hopped out of the Gate and cracked my head on a branch.**"

Erasmus responded, perhaps a hair faster than usual. "**Well, from what I have heard this 'Blue Lagoon' is an ideal place for one to become, how to say, acclimatized to the wilderness of Pandora. I'm sure the convoy would not object to the both of us accompanying them to the reserve.**"

Again, he was thrown by how his father's voice had that tiny note of pleading, the one he wouldn't notice unless he was specifically listening for it. "**Uh, yeah, sure. I'm mean, it's not like there was anything else I had planned on doing. Lead the way.**"

Erasmus beckoned and was out the door almost faster than he could blink. Committed, for better or worse, he followed, almost pushed to a slow jog just to keep up with the elder Overlord. Did he really want to tag along on what sounded like it would be just a boring little jaunt through a tame section of jungle? No, not really, but shit just happened sometimes.

Soul Calibur whispered in his head. "_Well,_ _that was amazingly easy wasn't it? And here I thought you were just going to blow the whole thing off._"

He responded mentally, just so his father wouldn't hear. "**Yeah? No duh. But if I did, mom would give me that sad little stare that makes the receiver feel like a festering pile of shit. I swear, that woman has weaponized guilt.**"

The sword chuckled, mercifully still in the quietude of his head. "_Aw, it's so cute. You've destroyed whole nations and you're still scared of mommy._"

An involuntary twitch started acting up in the corner of his left eye, and it was all he could do to not roar out loud at his partner. "**I am NOT scared of my own mother! Besides, how the hell are you even in a position to judge? Do I have to remind you that you were made, not born? Further-**"

He would have continued his silent rant, but one step more caused him to unceremoniously bump into the back of Erasmus, who had stopped for an, as of yet, unknown reason.

Erasmus's voice rang out, tinged with a slight note of amusement. "**Daydreaming are we, son?**" He looked up to see his father standing in front of three skeletal looking, four-wheeled 'things' that other people were sitting in. "**Regretfully, it seems that the two of us are going to be following the convoy on foot.**"

Genuinely confused, especially because "convoy" implied riding rather than walking, he unwittingly uttered one of the dumbest sounds the human mouth could form. "**Huh?**"

His father turned towards the closest contraption and raised a booted foot before setting it lightly on the side. With a motion barely noticeable, except by the effect it caused, Erasmus leaned on the object, which caused it to violently twist. The people sitting on, or technically in, the device were tossed about like leaves in a gale, and were slung directly the opposite direction when the elder Overlord removed his foot.

Erasmus turned back to him, clearly ignoring the vocal objection from the humans he had just jostled. "**It seems, reasonably so, that these vehicles are not up to the task of supporting arcanium or durium armor, and so therefore we must walk, or run as it were.**"

Soul Calibur chimed in, out loud, inadvertently doing a fantastic impression of his deceased mistress Juno. "_Yeah, like, obviously_."

Silence fell upon the whole group, and not for the first time did he feel like plucking the mouthy sword off of his back and dropping her in the mud for about an hour or so, longer when she embarrassed him like this in front of a crowd.

Eventually, Erasmus broke the silence, whether for the purpose of hurrying the little expedition along or sparing him further scrutiny was open for debate. "**Alright then, enough loitering. We have a place to be, do we not?**"

Grumbling, he set off at a jog just fast enough to keep pace with his father and started after the convoy, but not without giving Soul Calibur a harsh flick to the eye to show his displeasure. She was definitely not getting polished tonight, no matter how much she complained about dust on her blade.

Pandora: Blue Lagoon

Linda Wright stretched her arms back, relaxing into the slow rocking motion of the buggy as the light vehicle rolled along one of the few, if not only, decently maintained trails on all of Pandora. This was also, unlike everywhere else; one of the scarce few places a person could feel somewhat safe while in the jungle. It was close enough to two major bases that most of the big predators stayed the hell away, and only a few rabidly hungry viperwolves ever bothered anyone. Sure, the indigenous plants could be a pain in the ass, very literally in some cases, but they were plants. You had to actually walk up to them and present yourself to be regularly hurt. Further, considering everything that had been going on, she was actually looking forward to a nice, quiet belay in the Lagoon. Nothing much happened, save for the occasional geek getting his foot melted off by one of the aforementioned plants, or some stupid, and very likely drunk, jarhead frightening the sturmbeasts and getting trampled. She did not think of herself as a stupid person, nor was she ever enough of a drinker to get herself into trouble. Well, beyond getting a little fresh with one or two of the men on rare occasion.

Really, the "worst" thing she was going to have to contend with was Amanda's cooking. Not that it was bad; on the contrary it was good, too damn good in fact. She glanced down and absentmindedly prodded the flabby side of her right thigh. It was hard enough keeping trim on a planetoid with lower gravity than Earth without a bubbly, smiling ditz whipping up cookies or some such every day out of some misguided sense of sisterhood. Normally that kind of activity would be frowned upon, but the damn Quartermaster had a crush Amanda so the goods kept coming. Then count the fact that she and Amanda were going to be the only two women at the firebase for the foreseeable future, ugh. They'd have to roll her out by the end of the month.

She glanced over at the driver, Garrett Adams or something, a pale skinned fellow with amusingly curly brown hair, and started to open her mouth with the intention of checking up on the tag-along duo, but she shut it again when the pair of them effortlessly jogged past the buggy on the left. Unavoidably, her mind lit up with envious thoughts as the supposed father and son duo pulled away, the both of them moving with the same unerring fluidity that they had exhibited at the start of the trek over twenty minutes ago. The buggies were easily traveling at over thirty miles per hour, and they were "_jogging."_

Up ahead, the older one, distinguishable by the greater prevalence of glittering black armor, stopped cold at a corner in the road, the last one before arriving at the Blue Lagoon preserve, and held up a hand. "**Halt!**"

Before she could begin to wonder why the older Overlord would make such a declaration a giant arrow seemingly materialized out of nowhere and plunged into Garrett's chest. The man died instantly, and the now driverless buggy careened forward on an out-of-control course to a crash that would likely kill her, provided she didn't get stuck with a Navi arrow before then, or thrown out and run over by one of the following buggies. And to think, the worst she had been thinking of was that her hips would get wider.

The vehicle came to a sudden, jarring stop, throwing her forward against the seatbelt but not to her doom as she had thought. She looked back, and was shocked to see the elder Overlord had seized the rear end of the buggy, stopping it cold with simple mass.

Over the eruption of gunfire and Navi war cries, and while she scrambled to extricate herself from the buggy, the Overlord spoke. "**I can postulate that your base in the preserve is either in dire straits or destroyed. The wire gate to what I assume the preserve proper was burst open, the men on both turrets riddled with arrows. I recommend that one of you inform your Colonel posthaste.**"

Drawing her only weapon, a wasp pistol, she relayed the orders with a scream as she dove down behind the cover of a fallen log, shuddering as the piece of wood quaked with every arrow impact. She might not like either of the two Overlords, but that was no reason to be stupid when one of them told her to do something sensible.

She peeked up over the log, aiming her pistol in search of something to shoot at, but the scene she was greeted with was more of a show than a target. The young Overlord, Acheron or something vintage like that, was standing completely out in the open, firing what looked to be two pistols roughly every half second in an alternating fashion while leaning and twisting his torso to avoid the arrows still flying from out of the trees. The Navi that were swarming out of the surrounding bush were getting blown apart, like the pistols were shooting rockets instead of bullets. As she watched, one of the larger Navi closed to melee range, swinging a huge club right for Acheron's head. To her complete befuddlement, the heavy wooden weapon sailed right through Acheron without so much as a murmur. The young Overlord seemed to take offence to the action anyway, holstering both pistols and snatching the shining crystal object off of his back before violently slashing downwards with the object and cutting both Navi and club neatly in half. The apparent greatsword hit the ground with a crystalline clang before Acheron put both of his hands on the hilt and brought it back up, hacking a Navi with a staff apart just as cleanly.

She blinked a few times to make sure she wasn't hallucinating. "Holy, holy everlasting shit."

And then a red blur caught her attention out of the corner of her eye, a blur that slowly resolved itself into the infernal visage of the elder Overlord, Erasmus. Now, she knew she was nowhere near an expert on blades, or close quarters combat in general, but damn if there wasn't something savagely beautiful with how the elder Overlord handled that gigantic bloody blade. Using only one hand, Erasmus was whipping around a blade as big as her whole body like it was a feather, killing Navi faster than she could count them. One blue-skinned native rushed Erasmus with a staff, and though the event itself happened too fast for her eyes to follow the Navi warrior fell away, head cloven in two from crown to chin, but no further. That was straight up clinical lethality, and a stark contrast to Acheron's clumsier and overpowered style.

A human cry broke her out of her reverie of amazement. "Sergeant, behind you!"

Heeding the call she turned back, in time to see a large Navi warrior bearing down on her with a bone blade. The thought instantaneously occurred to her as to where in hell the Navi got bones big enough for weapons like that, but she acted before her mind could catch up. She ducked to the left with nary an inch to spare, wincing as the falling blade came a hairsbreadth short of burying itself in her collarbone. Aggression took over, and she shifted her aim to dead center of the Navi's chest. She fired three times, growling savagely as the bullets burrowed into the native's chest cavity. The Navi fell, but it wasn't quite dead yet. She dove at the native, tackling it flat before snatching the combat knife off of her hip and stabbing the Navi once, twice, three times in the throat. No such thing as overkill.

Pandora: Blue Lagoon

Erasmus ducked to the right, using the open palm of his free hand to shunt aside an incoming Navi club before going for the quick decapitation. He was fighting without really thinking about it, focusing his attention far more on his son. It would be a bald faced lie to say that he wasn't happy that Sophitia had sent the boy to him, but the resentment for that might just sour the entire experience. Perhaps, well, perhaps if he found some way of getting Acheron invested in this little expedition he could possibly extend the time he had to mend his relationship with his son. It was amusing in a way, since he had essentially come here to get some perspective, to think about it in solitude.

He called out over the melee, "**Acheron.**"

The boy shot a glance over his way, briefly pausing in the middle of slaughtering one of the Navi. "**What? Is their blood sticking to my armor?**"

He could not help but chuckle, even though he was fairly sure Acheron was not in the least bit serious. "**I'm sure it is, though that's not what I'm calling for.**" He suspended his speech momentarily to manually emancipate a Navi warrior's head from its shoulders. "**What do you say we spice this skirmish up a little?**"

Acheron didn't respond for the length of time it took to shoot three more natives and slice a fourth. "**Ok, first, you call this a 'skirmish?' There are blue elves knee deep over here.**" Another gunshot rang out. "**Second, I guess that would depend on what you mean by 'spice it up' and whether I can go along with it.**"

He flipped forward, driving his right boot into a Navi's face and sliding a short distance along the ground while technically surfing on the corpse. "**I was thinking, perhaps we should consider throwing a few more bodies at the equation.**"

Acheron apparently didn't get the implication. "**What, you mean start chucking their corpses back at them? That's sick, even for an Evil god.**"

He sighed, and muttered under his breath. "**Wit is apparently wasted on the young.**" He continued at full volume, absentmindedly carrying on with the droll slaying of the irritated natives. "**What I was suggesting, was that we deploy the minions. At the very least they would be worth the laugh.**"

Acheron's amber eyes widened and the boy froze for the slightest of moments. "**Oh, right. We can do that?**"

He seized a Navi by the scalp before kicking the warrior in the chest, ripping the head off which he subsequently pegged at the next target. "**I don't see why not. You can create portals to anywhere you've been already, yes?**"

Acheron kicked a Navi away and redrew his pistols, firing six shots off in quick succession. "**I guess, I really don't think much about the minions anymore. Hancock hates them with a passion.**"

He responded immediately. "**Well, that's an interesting tidbit. I'll keep that in mind next time I converse with her, if I ever get that chance.**"

Acheron started to object. "**What are you talking about 'if' you get the…**" The boy's tone suddenly took on a rather pensive, thoughtful tone. "**Oh, wait, right. Ah, sorry?**"

He dismissed the apology. "**None is necessary. Now, the portal if you would?**"

A finger snap, barely audible over the gunfire and cries of blistering agony from the Navi, was the only notice he received. But it was more than enough. He disengaged from active combat for a moment by throwing an explosive fireball at his own feet, scattering the Navi like grass from a scythe. Granted his reprieve he stuck the tip of his thumb and index finger in his mouth and whistled, a single piercing note coupled with a telepathic command. A redundancy, but it never hurt to have more than one option on the field. He didn't look towards the portal and he didn't need to, but he could imagine the head of a Brown minion poking out tentatively at first, then charging headlong into combat as they were wont to do.

Indeed, mere seconds passed before he heard the multitude of unintelligible, dry, but ever enthusiastic, battle cries of the minions. "For the Mastah! For the Overlord!" And other incomprehensible roars of fury.

He stopped advancing, simply pointing in the general direction of the Navi and allowed the seemingly unending hoard of goblin minions to scramble over each other just to get the first crack at the natives. Two or three would gang up on individual targets, leaping straight for the ten foot aliens and latching on like limpets on the hull of a ship. Once there they would begin flailing away with both sharp and blunt objects, and the minions small size was deceptive, they were quite strong considering. At most, per Navi, it took a few metaphorical heartbeats to bring each warrior down, after which the minions would celebrate the kill for a scant second before moving on.

Acheron jogged up beside him, clearly free of attention with the arrival of the minions. "**I almost forgot how funny those little shits are. And why Hancock hates them so much.**"

A tiny smirk came to his face. "**Let me guess; she hates their smell, their noise, and how they attempt to hump her leg.**"

Grudgingly, a short laugh escaped his son. "**Yeah, that's pretty much it I think. Unless they did something else that her glorious highness didn't deign to tell me about. Which is pretty damn likely cause of how fussy that lady is.**" Acheron's gaze tracked off to the right. "**Hey, looks like someone decided to cut and run away from the party.**" The young man pointed off towards a lone Navi sprinting at an impressive clip towards the ruined wire gate. "**Do you want to run it down or should I?**"

He glanced back and forth between his son and the fleeing native only once. "**Can you not simply reach out and clothesline them from where you stand?**"

The young man let out a snicker. "**Sure, was kind of hoping that you'd suggest a race just so I could win, but whatever.**"

The black iris opened in the air next to his son, into which Acheron inserted his left arm and waited silently, gaze fixed on the fleeing Navi. When the distant target leaped over a fallen tree Acheron acted, and in the distance the impact was loud enough to induce a wince of minor empathy from him. The Navi crumpled like a twig, and understandably did not move. However, an errant twitch or two revealed that the alien was not dead, at least not fully.

Acheron removed his arm from the portal and pumped his fist in the air. "**Oh! Did you see that? Did you see that? Flat on its blue, pansy ass!**" Spontaneously, the young man whirled on him, hand held palm out. "**Up high!**"

In spite of the fact that the motion was slightly childish he acted immediately, whipping his arm up and slapping hand to hand with a resounding crash of metal on metal. Acheron was clearly caught up in the moment, and he wasn't about to let the brief moment of levity pass him by. In fact, it was a mere two to three seconds after the high-five was completed that Acheron seemed to realize what had transpired. The change in demeanor was like a smell, a pleasant scent gone sour, like when milk was left out for too long.

His son's voice held a minor accusatory tone. "**Hey, wait just a minute-**"

He held up his hand in an appeasing motion. "**Hold a moment. Before you cast any more blame my way I would like to ask you one thing. Just now, was it really so hard to **_**NOT**_** be angry with me for once**?"

He expected an immediate response, but the silence stretched on for a few moments before it came. "**I, I'll get back to you on that.**"

Acheron started stalking off deeper into the preserve, stopping along the way to deliver an insulting kick to the downed Navi warrior. He wasn't sure, but maybe the rapid blinking of light emanating from Soul Calibur was a sign that a serious conversation was taking place. He hoped so.

A weak smile twisted the corners of his mouth up. "**It's a start.**" Then he shot a glance over his shoulder at the RDA troopers that had been a part of the convoy. "**Well, are you going to advance along with us, or has the definition of 'soldier' changed to 'coward' while I wasn't looking?**" He pointed toward the Navi Acheron had disabled. "**And truss that creature up while you're at it, I'm going to have some serious questions for it later.**"

He waved an arm and gathered the minions that remained, the twenty or so Browns that had not been mowed down by lucky swings of Navi weapons, and took off after his son at a slow jog, one slow enough that his mortal underlings could keep up anyway.

Blue Lagoon: RDA Firebase

Acheron found himself conflicted, a rare enough event that it was worthy of note. On the one hand he was still simmering with anger that his mother had essentially browbeaten him into coming here, and on the other there was an insidious feeling of guilt poisoning that anger. Guilt for, putting it bluntly, being something of a royal asshole to his father. His rational mind was starting to tell him that Erasmus should not be held accountable for the actions of a dumb elf, should not be responsible for a twenty year gap, but along came irrationality and fucked that whole line of thought up. And of course, Soul Calibur and her inane chatter weren't helping.

The sword continued, blathering away. "_…Oh and you have got to remember just now. So much fun! Though you really could have used me a bit more instead of those barbaric pistols. Take a page out of your father's book, or did you ignore the way he massacred more blue things than you did with both guns blazing…?_"

He interrupted her, just for the sake of his sanity. "**If you like how my dad handles a blade so much, maybe I could arrange us to swap swords for a day.**"

Soul Calibur immediately stopped her prattling to screech at him. "_Ew, no, no way! Those hands have been holding Soul Edge. I don't care if he's the best swordsman across all of the worlds, I'd hate every second of him holding me_." The crystal weapon laughed her trademark 'breaking glass' laugh. "_And by the way, since when did you start calling your Old Man, 'Dad'?_"

He sighed, rolled his golden eyes, and ignored the talking weapon. Thankfully, at least for him, his foot hit against something that decidedly turned the conversation, if any was forthcoming, away from his familiar issues. It was a body, a human body, a _dead_ human body. The corpse had what looked to be at least three arm-length arrows sticking out of its chest, which was overkill by any definition of the word. His eyes slowly looked up, revealing a scene of carnage almost as gruesome as the one he and Erasmus had created minuets ago. In fact, the only thing separating the two visions beyond the obvious difference in the race of the victims was numbers, only thirty to forty people compared to the seventy or eighty Navi that lay dead back at the gate.

A loud twang, immediately followed by an agonized scream, drew his attention off to the left, towards one of the odd buildings. A fresh body was thrown out one of the rectangular holes in the side, which was followed out by a lone Navi. This warrior, if executing near helpless people qualified it for that distinction, stood stock still as their eyes met, surprise etched into every muscle of the alien face.

He scowled and drew one of his pistols. "**Fuck you, asshole.**"

He fired from the hip, his unerring aim, and/or good fortune rewarded by the bloom of blood and gore from the Navi's chest, right around where the heart would be on a person.

Soul Calibur had a bitchy remark as he re-holstered the gun. "_You see, those pistols come first in your head. I'm the backup weapon, and that sucks._"

He whirled around to face the collection of corpses with his arms spread wide. "**You know what else sucks? Dead bodies everywhere. Now is not the time for bitching about which murder tool I use first.**"

A short distance away his father jogged up to the encampment, followed by both the small hoard of minions and the remaining human soldiers. The latter, they each erupted with cries of disgust, horror, and outrage. Considering how small, figuratively, the base they had left behind to get here, he assumed that most of the people in the slowly spreading crowd of the living knew at least one of the newly dead, which he supposed was worthy of a little sympathy. He wondered for a moment whether it was appropriate though, considering that he was an Overlord and a direct descendant of the god of Evil.

That self same god raised a hand and uttered an order. "**Hold, all of you. I require silence.**"

The humans obeyed immediately, and he hadn't exactly been spewing words so he was fine. Erasmus's head swiveled slowly left and right, and after a moment he thought he had an inkling of what his father was hearing. There was a low, whining wheeze that he could barely make out. He had no idea where it was coming from, but he supposed that was why Erasmus had ordered for quiet in the first place.

His father made a snap motion, pointing to two of the soldiers in quick succession. "**You and you, with me, the rest of you may keep tending the departed.**"

Presumably hunting the source of the sound, Erasmus darted off to the far right of the encampment with both soldiers in tow. Why the elder Overlord had bothered to pick up an escort he could only guess, but only a second or two passed with the small group out of sight before another cry rose up, this one far more desperate.

One of the soldiers that had followed Erasmus shouted. "Sarge, get over here quick!"

To his surprise a woman answered that summons, picking herself up and away from the slain and hustling off into the brush. He of course was now curious, as much about the source of the noise as to why the sergeant was needed so urgently. So, ambling away from the soldiers that had now taken to gathering the dead he approached the general zone Erasmus had vanished into. Immediately, he started to pick up frantic bits of sound, voices exhorting someone to do something.

He brushed one frond of a large plant aside and could barely restrain his voice at the sight. "**Unholy mother…**"

Whereas the first victim he had observed had in all likelihood been killed quickly before they had realized they were in danger or pain, the one in front of him now had not had that luxury. A girl, looking little more than nineteen, was impaled to a tree by one of the long knives the Navi had attempted to slice him with. Only in this case the girl was also suspended about a foot off the ground, her entire body weight resting on the knife. In all likelihood she had probably tried to run, and one of the Navi had done this simply as an afterthought. The painful part of the picture was that she was clearly still alive, and the sounds had been her feeble attempts to cry for help. She was still making noise, but the sounds were less words than they were little mewling sobs.

The blonde sergeant was borderline hysteric. "Amanda, you listen to me sweetie we're going to get you down, ok?" She rounded on one of the men. "Someone get that fucking knife out of her!"

Erasmus chimed in, his deep voice unusually flat. "**If you remove that blade she will bleed out instantly.**" The god stepped over within an arm's reach of the tree. "**This will take some finesse. Be ready to support her when the tree ceases to do so.**"

Moving like the girl was made of glass, Erasmus slipped one hand behind "Amanda" to grasp the blade of the knife, and he could only assume that his father planned to slide the entire length of the blade out. Slowly, excruciatingly slowly in fact, literally, the bone knife emerged inch by inch until both of the human men caught the girl as she fell free. Once away from the trunk, the massive bloodstain left behind was visible, and anyone not accustomed to the sight would have retched up everything they ever ate.

The female sergeant had laid Amanda down on the ground, and was still talking to her in the same quasi-assuring voice, mixed with a little bit of command. "Hey, Amanda don't you dare die on me, you hear? You're going to pull through this. We're going to get you fixed up and you can teach me how to make those delicious cookies you always make. You're…"

Without warning, in the middle of the very cliché but nonetheless empathic speech, Amanda went completely limp, dead as dead could be. A silence fell upon the three soldiers, a deep melancholy that plucked at your heartstrings no matter your alignment. Erasmus even set a comforting hand on the shoulder of the female sergeant, while verbally reminding her that Amanda was gone.

The blonde was silent like the rest for a long time, then she spoke six words tinged with the deepest rage he had ever heard, from man or woman. "I'm going to kill them all."

Erasmus responded, as flatly as before. "**In due time Sergeant Wright, in due time.**"


	6. Connections

Chapter Six: Connections

Pandoran Jungle:

Acheron Killgore walked along, staring straight ahead at a spot on the ground not very far ahead of his own two feet. His father had elected to walk back to Hell's Gate and he, honestly not giving a damn himself, had tagged along. Neither of them had spoken so much as a single syllable since departing Blue Lagoon, and frankly the silence was starting to get to him. Heck, even a random outburst from Soul Calibur would be fairly welcome. He'd probably be annoyed within a heartbeat of her opening her figurative mouth, but it'd be welcome noise all the same.

He cast a sidelong glance towards Erasmus, observing the elder Overlord's laconic, yet formal, walk with just a hint of swagger, and made a slight effort at breaking the silence. "**So, ah, that was a pretty nice thing you did back there.**"

His father looked over at him, not even breaking stride. "**To what action are you referring; my efforts to end the misery of Amanda Marsh or my consoling words to the grief-stricken sergeant?**"

Really, he hadn't thought the question all the way through, so he fumbled out an answer. "**Eh, I guess, both?**"

Erasmus looked upwards, silent for a second or two, before producing a rough snort. "**And I suppose you are confused since both actions violate my standing title as god of Evil, yes?**"

He paused for a second himself, just so he could think it over. "**Yeah, at least that sounds right.**"

The elder Overlord openly started laughing, though it was a dry, morose laugh. "**My boy, I am an Overlord before I am a god, and a man before that. I have not grown numb to compassion since my ascendency to deific status, nor will I ever.**" The laughter ended abruptly, with a short huff. "**And if you wish to be technical about it, if I were all Evil all the time you would never have been born. I would have killed your mother the moment after she had told me what I wanted to know.**"

Whatever he had been going to say caught in his throat in shock at those words and he staggered a step to the left, away from his father. "**What the hell did you just-**"

A dark, low chuckle from Erasmus cut him off. "**Calm yourself Acheron, I was speaking in hypothetical terms, as to what I would have done if I were divorced from my humanity. I truly love Sophitia, and would never raise my hand against her or any of your aunts.**" After a moment the evil god corrected himself. "**Well, we might spar every now and then, but that hardly counts.**"

A frown twisted his mouth. "**Sure, whatever you say dad.**" After a second or two a thought occurred to him, and he voiced it. "**Say, speaking of mom, how in hell did she wind up with those freaky eyes?**" He realized what had come out of his mouth and hurriedly added on. "**I mean, not that I'd ever say anything like that to her face, you understand. I'm sure you find them very, very attractive and all of that-**"

Again, his father's dark chuckle cut him off. "**Once more, calm yourself Acheron. I'd tell you the tale simply for the asking.**" The man paused, clearly thinking about something. "**Actually, why don't I start with how I met your mother in the first place? It's not at all far before the question you asked, and I don't think either of us has ever gotten around to relating the events.**"

He shot a glance at the road they were walking on, and there was no end even remotely in sight. "**Sure, looks like we have the time to spare anyhow.**"

Erasmus nodded once. "**Wonderful. Now, I'm sure that Gnarl beat you over the head with the tale of my first otherworldly excursion so I'm not going to re-retell that aspect. And I shall skip over the sacking of South Hampton and the subsequent nautical crossing as they are of no significant import.**" One morbid laugh punctuated the tale. "**Amusing stuff, but irrelevant. Anyway, I have made landfall and am trekking my way through the pine forest of Western Europe when I come upon this cliff. Below me, in the middle of a grand vista there was a small clearing. And as I am standing there I witness this woman run into view.**"

He broke in, voicing what he assumed to be the next part of the story. "**And this woman was mom, right?**"

Soul Calibur chided him out loud. "_Thank you, Captain Obvious._"

His father carried on as if nothing had been spoken by either of them. "**Indeed. Now, at the time I required directions, so I descend the cliff face to extract said information from the, as-of-then, mystery woman. She was decidedly not pleased to see me, and attacked me almost on sight.**"

He felt an involuntary twitch start acting up in his left eye. "**Hold on, mom tried to kill you when you first met?**"

Erasmus reacted to this interruption. "**Yes, an event that repeated itself three times over for the rest of your aunts. What, you thought I had her at 'hello' like you've supposedly managed with all of your mistresses?**"

Again, Soul Calibur rushed her commentary in. "_Had them at hello? That's stretching the truth a little bit thin don't you think? I mean, Hancock kicked you in the-_"

He hurriedly shut the sword up by closing his hand over her eye. "**Alright! Maybe I exaggerated a bit.**" A few steps passed in awkward silence before he offered up a solution. "**Ah, why don't you skip the blow by blow and go straight to the part where mom gets red eyes?**"

A knowing twinkle shone out of Erasmus's ebony helm before the reply and continuation came. "**As you wish, son. I'll gloss over her escape attempt and the rescue mission to the Golden Hills. Upon the return from the latter Sophitia descended into the Spawning Pits on a tour while I tended to a minor emergency. Following some rather exquisitely bad advice from Gnarl she touched the Tower Heart.**" The god shrugged helplessly. "**And that's it. The gem had a severe reaction to your mother's pure heart and 'corrected' it. I suppose I could elaborate further, but I've no wish to bore you with my unfounded theories.**"

His mind was already reeling, so his father's verbal restraint was probably a good thing. "**Yeah, uh, maybe some other time.**" He glanced up the road, noticing the large wire and concrete façade of Hell's Gate. "**Oh hey, we're back. Great timing huh?**" He trailed off with fairly uneasy laughter.

As the two of them marched into the base he could feel the mood of the people around him crash faster than a brick would sink in water. Apparently, the remains of the convoy had spread the word quite effectively and the mourning had already begun. Against the backdrop of grief though, he could see signs of tension, outrage, and aggression. An off-duty soldier cleaning their rifle with a hard-set, dark scowl engraved upon their face. A wall sentry glaring off into the jungle, just daring something blue to emerge from the brush. A whole group of soldiers throwing foot long knives at a crude, wooden effigy of a Navi. These people had just been through one war, or so he had heard, and it looked like they were raring and ready to go for another one.

Erasmus's musing voice infiltrated his thoughts. "**Amazing, isn't it? How vindictive and resolute the spirit of man is. Given the proper motivation, in this case revenge, and cause, survival, and there is no limit to the hardship and pain you can put a group of people through without causing them to falter. Nothing short of systematic elimination will stop them.**"

A voice rose up in response. "I'll say an amen to that sir."

He looked towards the source of the sound only to see the same sergeant from Blue Lagoon, considerably worse for wear than the last time he had seen them. Her eyes were drawn, puffy and red, but filled with a dark, murderous fury such as he had never seen in a normal human.

Linda Wright snapped off a rough salute. "I don't care for either of you all that much, but when you take the fight to the Navi my men and I are yours. If command doesn't like that, they can kiss my ass."

Erasmus nodded once and casually mimicked the gesture. "**I presume you reported the details to Colonel Quaritch. How did he take the news?**"

Wright's hands both balled up into fists. "He was absolutely livid, even hearing it for the second time, as if that's any surprise. I wager he'd order a full-scale attack if he had a specific tribe to attribute the attack to. Otherwise our collective bosses won't give the ok, humanitarian bullshit and all that."

His father shook his head slowly. "**Oh yes, the human race is slowly dying out on Earth and those in charge are concerned with being construed as 'nice' by the plebian population.**"

The woman's enraged continence was disrupted momentarily and her mouth hung open beneath the clear mask. "Ah, I'm going to guess that was sarcasm."

Erasmus continued. "**At any rate, that issue of which particular tribe perpetrated this offensive should be resolved forthwith. That prisoner has been delivered to Doctor Grace Augustine, yes?**"

The sergeant's face formed a contemptuous scowl. "We got the damn thing to her, sure. But she keeps insisting that she can't accurately determine the tribe. Any moron can tell she's lying her ass off, but what're we going to do?"

His father's red eyes narrowed to slits. "**Is that so? Well, it seems that someone's going to have to convince the esteemed doctor that her honesty is far more important than whatever misguided reason she has for this blatant falsehood.**" The man turned his head to look at him. "**Acheron, would you care to join me in wringing the truth out of this reticent scientist?**"

He glanced around at the rest of the grieving soldiers. "**Ah, no, you go on ahead. I think I'll try mingling a little. Talk to some of the soldiers, you know.**"

Erasmus responded with a simple nod. "**That would be wise given the circumstances, but I advise that you prepare yourself for rather poignant emotional outbursts. That is, if you are the sort to be moved by them.**"

He scratched the back of his neck and let out a sigh. "**Yeah, I was kind of expecting that. Comes with the territory though, right? You put yourself in charge and people bring their problems to you, both the big problems and the little ones.**"

His father gave off the rough impression of a smirk. "**Reword it a little and that statement would be quite profound, but true nonetheless.**" The god looked off towards the main complex for a second before continuing. "**Well, I should be off. You know where to find me if something world-shattering happens.**"

He waited until his father had long since faded from sight before saying a single sentence under his breath. "**He's not so bad, I guess.**"

Hell's Gate: Laboratories

Erasmus followed Sergeant Wright in lockstep; directing, percentage-wise, only ten or less percent of his attention on the physical world. The majority of his mind was, understandably, preoccupied with thoughts of his son. As selfish as it was, he sensed nothing from the boy that indicated he would be leaving at any point in the near future, and it made him glad. It made him glad, that Acheron had more depth of character than an order-smashing, wench-bedding hooligan. It made him glad, that there were at least overtures of civility between the two of them, defying his earlier fears over Acheron's resentment.

Ahead, his ten percent of attention caught the sergeant stop at a doorway and crudely jerk her thumb through the passage. "Here you go; the bitch herself is in there with that Navi prisoner. Get her to say what we need to hear, alright?" As he moved by, just about to close the heavy gauge slab behind him, Wright stuck her comparatively tiny arm into the doorway and stopped the swinging piece of metal. "Hey, you're going to kill that thing after she identifies it, right?"

A frown twisted the side of his mouth up. "**Well I'm certainly not going to just let it go and give the Navi one of their soldiers back that has seen to the heart of this fortification. Common sense dictates otherwise.**" An awkward moment passed by before he spoke up again. "**You have some sort of request with regards to the soon to be executed?**"

Wright's mouth set itself in a stiff grimace. "I want to be the one to do it, kill the thing I mean. Amanda was my friend, whether I admit that or not. I can't make it hurt nearly as much, but I can put a shotgun shell in that Navi's pathetic excuse of a heart and watch it die."

He took a moment to choose his words. "**Are you sure? I feel I must warn you that carrying out an execution is nothing at all like killing an enemy on the field of battle. You must look a helpless being in the eye and make a conscious choice to end their existence. I do not know many people who could do so and walk away mentally unscathed.**"

The sergeant's eyes fell towards her boots. "I know that, sir, but it's just something that I want, have to do."

He delivered one curt nod. "**As you wish. Wait here then, and I will call for you once Augustine has told us what we need to know.**"

He spun on his heel, taking five steps before hanging a hard left into the lab. The subject of the former conversation caught his eye immediately, its long blue body lain out stoically along a waist high table. Several clear tubes were attached to its left arm, and though he could not tell what exactly was going through them he could at least surmise that it was costing someone something. More, the look of quiet contentment and peace on the unconscious alien's face irked him, as the doctor was obviously making the Navi, a prisoner of war, comfortable. As for Augustine herself, she was positioned with her back to the wall, arms crossed, with an openly hostile look slapped across her excessively plain face. Her unkempt, frizzy hair was tied back, which only served to accentuate the scowl she was directing at him.

He shifted his gaze back and forth between the Navi prisoner and Augustine. "**A little more effort than necessary to restrain a captive, don't you think?**"

The doctor simply narrowed her eyes. "Spare me the small talk, I'm just going to tell you exactly what I told Quaritch's lackey before you. There is nothing definitive that can identify this Navi as from any one tribe."

He matched the glare, with arguably far more intensity. "**And I am going to call you on your bluff. I may not have been studying the Navi for years like you have, but I am aware that the each tribe has a unique tattoo pattern. Every Timpani that I slew had the same markings, and you know full well that I killed enough to make that observation.**"

Augustine simply shrugged. "Did you consider that the tattoos might have been exclusive to the Timpani?"

He felt his temper starting to raise its ugly head, and let it flow out in his words. "**Don't insult my intelligence, wretch. You are shielding the tribe responsible for slaughtering dozens of your co-workers, people that had never so much as held a gun in their lives. I should think you would care more about that than the barbarian tribe that perpetuated the attack.**"

The doctor's countenance refused to waver. "Barbarian?' This coming from the man that murdered essentially the entire Timpani tribe, women and children included?"

A rough snort emerged from his nostrils. "**True, I may not have the moral standing to pontificate on the just treatment on non-combatants. But the Navi certainly are barbaric when compared to the people they killed. Humanity has struck out for the stars, not just out of ambition but also for survival. Your precious Navi seem perfectly content to remain a part of the food chain of the ecosystem instead of rising above it. And a race that is so content to let themselves stagnate is what stands between mankind and continued progress? Don't be absurd.**"

The smallest crack appeared in Augustine's façade. "A nice speech, but I'm still not going to tell you which tribe was behind it."

A cold smile slid across his black visage. "**A slip that implies that there indeed was a particular tribe behind it. Now, I could just take that to your Colonel, I imagine, and you would be imprisoned for some violation or something, but I am not in that charitable of a mood right now. So…**" He held up his right hand, glittering with black lightning. "**…I think I'll just tear the name out of you with extreme prejudice.**"

The woman's howls of agony erupted in unison with the unleashing of the Evil Presence spell, and it was unusually satisfying for some reason.

Hell's Gate: Command Structure

Lisa Ryder was a communications specialist, which of course meant she was one of the first in Hell's Gate to hear about what happened out in Blue Lagoon. The comms officer of the relief convoy had contacted her directly at her station in the command tower mere minutes after the fact. As such she had been the one to deliver the news to Colonel Quaritch, and witness a rare show of emotion from the hardened veteran, both fury and melancholy. It was something she was going to hold onto, to remind herself that the man leading them was just as human as anyone else, despite many humorous claims to the contrary.

She was not someone that was a stranger to the concept or the event of death, on the contrary, as one of the two leading soldiers in the last war she had seen far more than any one person should have to deal with; most of it dispensed by the machine gun of her brother or the massive GAU-90 of her AMP suit. Nick, in all his bravado, always bolstered her resolve by asking the simple question of who she would rather see dead; herself or a loved one, or twenty something Navi. The answer was of course obvious, but as a former member of the Avatar program she had, well, she guessed she could call it perspective on the natives of Pandora. They weren't wicked; they just wanted humanity off of their home, but since humanity needed the unobtanium to carry on that wasn't going to happen. The war had proven that it wasn't possible to stay neutral and try to make peace. Doctor Harper, her old boss in the program, had been right about that much. Unlike him though, she had no desire to die and see the faces of her family asking her why they had been betrayed. Her brother was human, would never be Navi, and there had been no way she would have turned on him. In a way, that made her pity Harper and his two associates, both of whom she had gunned down personally. The three of them must have felt like such outcasts, to feel that they could belong more among the Navi than with other people.

Speaking of outcasts, she found herself wondering how that "Overlord" fellow was getting on with the rest of the people on base. As she had told Nick out on the Plains of Goliath, she felt she was a good judge of character, and as such she felt that Erasmus was worthy of trust despite his "Evil" disposition. Pandora was not black or white and neither were the people on it. It was a mess of gray, and given where that man, or god, had chosen to place his loyalty so far she felt safe in assuming that he would stick with the human side of the grey. And now she heard that Erasmus's son had shown up, which of course only made her curious.

Out of the corner of her right eye she caught a red glow, immediately swiveling her seat towards what could only be the approaching subject of her most recent pondering. "Sir! It's, good to see you again. Ah, what can I do for you?"

The black titan halted his forward progress, the top of his tri-horned helmet only just clearing the ceiling. "**Ah, Lisa Ryder, most fortuitous. Yes, I was told that I could find your Colonel Quaritch in this section of the base. Could you direct me to him? I have, pressing matters to discuss with regards to certain events that unfolded in Blue Lagoon.**"

She found herself stunned for half a second before she stood. "Of course, sir, right this way." She turned to her fellow communications officer, and subordinate. "Locke, make sure that flock of Samsons from the Needle Hills gets switched over on time. Those folks will need the supplies, considering recent events." She turned her head towards the Overlord and made a simple 'come hither' motion with her left hand. "Right this way, the Colonel will definitely want to hear, whatever it is that you have to tell him."

Really, she could have just given the Overlord the exceedingly simple directions, three steps around the corner and immediately on the right, and stayed at her post; but she was curious herself about what was going on. Leading Erasmus to Quaritch was just a convenient excuse to hear the latest intel straight from the source, so to speak. She was sure that whatever news the Overlord had now had been wrested from Doctor Augustine, however he had managed that was best left to not be considered.

She knocked her knuckles against the frame of the purely decorative doorway that separated Quaritch's office from the rest of the command floor and snapped off a quick salute as the grizzled veteran looked up from desk. "Colonel, sir. The Overlord wanted to speak with you."

Quaritch shuffled a few papers around with an air of irritation. "Well whatever he has to say, I hope it's damn good. I just told Corporate to take his damn rocks and shove them up the company's collective ass, so I'm probably getting fired in the near future."

Lightly, Erasmus simply brushed by her and swept into the small office. "**I don't think that will become a big concern in the days ahead.**" The armored goliath held out a large hand and shook hands momentarily with the Colonel before continuing. "**I have two things to say; first, and of lesser import, your Doctor Augustine was actively shielding the tribe responsible for the Blue Lagoon slaughter. I recommend that she be isolated or confined in some manner that limits her interaction with the other people on base. Second, the tribe itself that was behind the massacre. I was told that you would be familiar with the name, the Omaticaya.**"

Before, she had seen a tiny sliver of Quaritch's rage when she had delivered the notice of the deaths in the Lagoon. Now, it was as though that anger had been only a candle next to the bonfire of fury alight in the veteran's eyes, for good reason. She was familiar with the name as well, if only from talk around the mess hall as the Navi tribe sitting on the largest deposit of unobtanium on the whole moon. That the deposit was relatively close to Hell's Gate was only icing on the cake, relatively speaking.

The Overlord sagely commented on the Colonel's reaction. "**I'll take that as a sign that yes, you are quite familiar with the tribe. Now why might that be?**"

Quaritch regained his full composure with a deep breath and leaned over on his desk. "I really shouldn't tell you but, our boy Jake Sullivan is deployed there, trying to convince the Navi that it's in everyone's best interest if they'd just walk away and find some other tree to squat under. If he was somehow involved in this…" The Colonel's right hand balled up into a fist so tight it shook.

Erasmus's eyes narrowed slightly, but his stance changed little. "**If that may be, then I would strongly suggest sequestering him along with Doctor Augustine, at least until his loyalty can be either proven or disproven.**"

The Colonel looked up, raw determination etched into the man's weathered face. "Oh I plan on it. And he's also going to spill anything he can tell us about the Omaticaya; villages, troop count, fortifications, anything and everything that we can use."

Literally five seconds after Quaritch stopped speaking a loud cry rang out from the front of the command structure. "Sir, we have a Scorpion taking off without authorization!"

The source of this voice was a young woman that had barely been on the job for more than a week, Amelia Davenport, a young woman with short brown hair and grey eyes. Given her length of service, it wasn't a strike against her that she sounded a bit panicky, especially on this planet. Outside, the gunship mentioned was lifting up off of the center pad, carrying nothing but people. Who those people were though, that was the mystery.

Hell's Gate: Command Structure

Erasmus Killgore was a man that was quite accustomed to organized chaos, ask anyone that had ever set foot inside his forge while he was working and they would say that he almost thrived on it. As such it was no real surprise that the sudden eruption of activity around him was not as disconcerting to him as it was to everyone else. In point of fact he found it strange that one misbehaving pilot warranted such a commotion. After a few seconds of observation, as an island of calm in the surrounding mayhem, it finally hit him. The "gunship" was a fully armed flying platform, the multitude of people outside, not to mention those standing around him were likely not armed to deal with such a threat.

Colonel Quaritch was barking into some kind of device. "Chacon? What in hell are you doing?"

A moment of relative silence passed before a rough, female voice answered Quaritch's demand. "The right thing. Get that through your thick skull you damn redneck asshole. You should see the looks on all of your faces right now…" Without any obvious instigation the woman's tone took a dramatic shift from smug to alarmed, "Oh shit!"

In spite of himself, a small smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. "**I can only assume the last was uttered at my presence.**"

Outside, the aircraft swung about rapidly and started off towards the jungle. Now, he knew he should do something, he just wasn't sure what. Sure, he could simply crash through the window and likely drag the "Scorpion" down to ground with just his mass, but doing so would allow the planet's toxic atmosphere to permeate the command structure, likely killing everyone inside. Not that he would be particularly bothered by that, it would just be a loss of perfectly competent support staff. He sure as hell didn't know how to work all of these devices, not that he wouldn't learn, but time constraints being what they were at the moment prohibited that course.

Colonel Quaritch seemed to have a plan though; the veteran was making a beeline for a small rectangular section of the window and, on a second look, he realized that it was some kind of emergency door. Clearly the Colonel either did not care about the possible consequences of allowing the poisonous air in, or Quaritch was being driven by a dark rage that simply blocked out thought about such matters. He suspected the latter, and the thought sparked what could be called a glimmer of admiration. Thinking aside, he was already moving when Quaritch stormed through to the outside, mask-less, and opened fire on the fleeing gunship with what looked to be some variant of pistol. He rushed by, preserving his forward momentum by slinging himself through the open hatch and promptly vaulting across the whole landing area to the outer wall. His eyes tracked the bullets sent after the craft, fire which he supplemented with a ball of flame about as large as the craft itself. However, infuriatingly, his throw sailed wide by about half a meter.

A cry from behind him caused him to involuntarily jerk around, "**Dad, catch!**"

At ground level, Acheron drew back his arm and hurled one of his pistols. Time seemed to slow down as he could see the weapon flip in the air on its way to him; once, twice, five times before he reached out with his right hand and snagged the gun from the ether. Wasting no time he whirled about and set his sights dead center on the retreating Scorpion, ruefully hoping that Acheron's flintlock pistol would be a sight more accurate than the GAU-90.

He dialed in his focus and squeezed the trigger, funneling as much magical power into the gun as he judged it could withstand. "**Consider this your severance package.**"

The single round, bolstered immeasurably by dark, arcane might sailed true towards the intended target, striking the craft high on the back of its left flank. There was no satisfying explosion, nor did a body magically fall out of the craft on a lazy path ground-ward, but the Scorpion craft did violently twist to the right just long enough for him to see the red spattered interior of the flight chamber, and the distant assurance of a corpse. It kept flying though, and repeated pulls of the trigger on the flintlock produced no further shots. It would seem that Acheron had developed a magic trick that deserved investigation, but that would come later.

He sensed a presence to his right, and he did not turn to look before a male voice spoke. "So, I guess this means that the war is back on, as if Blue Lagoon didn't make that clear already."

A quick twitch of his head revealed the speaker to be Nick Ryder, and he responded. "**So it would seem, soldier. So it would seem.**"


	7. Strike Back

Chapter 7: Strike Back

Hell's Gate: Command Tower

Acheron Killgore stood on the wide perimeter of the command deck, quietly listening to his father and the RDA Colonel go over plans to figuratively tear the Omaticaya a new asshole. It was a bit daunting to be sure, and he wasn't even talking about the Navi. He was daunted by the sheer complexity of thought the two old men were spinning in the air with a see-through version of what he assumed to be a representation of the whole planet. Small objects on said clear sphere were being shucked around at such a rate that his head started to hurt just from watching. Clearly, and becoming more so every passing second, he was no strategist. It made sense; of course, he had ever always just smashed his way through his problems, giving the same treatment to an Empire phalanx as he gave to a pervasive, annoying government.

He started mumbling to himself. "**Maybe I should just get out of here, let dad fill me in on what's going on when he's got a plan.**"

Just when he took two steps towards the exit his father spoke up, calling on him by name. "**Acheron, come over here for a moment. You should hear this.**"

Suppressing a groan of exasperation, he dragged himself up to the small circle of people gathered around the see-through planet. Up close like this he could see that one object was grossly oversized compared to reality, at least he thought so. No tree should be so big that it was fully visible from the sky.

His father pointed this over-sized object out. "**The Colonel and I have devised a strategy to launch something of a surgical strike against the Omaticaya residing at this home tree.**" The god traced a line across the transparent sphere from the orange 'tree' to an orange box, and then further to a blue box. "**We, you and I that is, shall lead a small strike force from here, Hell's Gate, represented in blue. We will take these men to this small Navi village, represented in orange, and butcher the inhabitants as quietly as possible. If we are successful, a clear lane will have been opened from here all the way to the home tree, also shown in orange.**"

The human Colonel, Quaritch, finished the plan synopsis. "While you're off working your bloody magic, I'll be prepping our pilots and air power. Once you give us the go ahead we'll sail straight on through and rain hellfire on the Omaticaya right where they sleep." The scarred man's visage contorted into a scowl. "Those alien bastards are going to learn the hard way that no one gets away with killing our people."

Erasmus confirmed the thought with a nod. "**Well spoken, if a little direct.**" The god made a sweeping gesture towards the display. "**So Acheron, anything you'd like to add?**"

He felt his mouth twist into a scowl, if only because he had nothing important at all to add. That wouldn't exactly make him look like the brilliant warlord's son, so he made up something trivial. "**Ah, who exactly are we taking with us?**"

The Colonel answered him. "Light Recon; you'll want to get out there and get the job done as fast as possible. We don't want our birds waiting on the pads any longer than we need to. That'd just give the Navi longer to figure out something's up. I've already given the order, the force will be geared up and ready to go within half an hour."

His father's follow-up commentary arrived before he could speak. "**Excellent, the two of us will complete our own preparations and leave you and the men to yours. Fate willing, this will go smoothly.**" A portal snapped open in the air behind his father, who beckoned with his left hand. "**Come along Acheron, I've something I wish to show you.**"

Glad to get the hell out of there he didn't hesitate. "**After you, Old Man.**"

He half-sprinted through the swirling darkness, only to skid to a sudden halt when he recognized the jagged, dark grey rock of the Netherworld around him on all sides. Between him and the walls though, were shelves fastidiously piled high with dozens upon dozens of lethal instruments, all bladed and/or puncture enabled. In fact, there were so many weapons around that he quickly lost track of what was what, compounded by the fact that he didn't recognize any of the assumed killing devices around him.

Genuinely awed, his voiced reflected his feelings. "**Whoa. What in hell do you need all this stuff for?**"

Erasmus, already two rows ahead through the racks of weapons, paused and shot him a quizzical look. "**What do you mean?**"

He shrugged. "**I mean, you've already got a soul sucking sword that is supposed to be able to cut the very heavens and armor that is just about invincible. What more could you need?**"

The god chuckled lightly, toying with the haft of a massive battleaxe as he did so. "**I'll admit, in terms of needs mine are quite fulfilled so far as combat is concerned. But I am a rather proud smith in the hours that I am not out conquering new lands or maintaining my hold on what I have already claimed.**" Erasmus laconically waved towards the rest of the room. "**Where else am I to keep the fruits of my anvil? Especially the ones that I am too proud of to discard and melt down.**" The elder Overlord produced an absolutely enormous dagger from one of the shelves. "**Take this blade, for instance. Durium, perfectly balanced from haft to tip; though that balance can be toyed with depending on the wielder the smith making it has in mind.**" Erasmus twirled the knife around on the open palm of his hand. "**This particular object is an item I designed with your aunt Taki in mind, as opposed to those soul-infused short swords she uses currently. But she preferred her own weaponry, so I store this down here in the event that she lose or break one of those blades.**"

His mouth produced a low whistle. "**Damn, you're really into this whole thing. Mom wasn't kidding.**" He looked down on the shelf in front of him, reaching out and picking up a long coil of thick rope with a devilishly sharp weight attached to one end. "**So, what's this thing?**"

Erasmus rounded the weapon racks and approached his side, glancing at the coiled rope for little over a second to provide an answer. "**That, my boy, is a rope dart, or Sheng Biao. Based upon a similar device I observed in the country of China that the natives used for martial arts.**" The Evil god accepted both coil and bladed tip, twirling the latter over his head slowly. "**I tended to find the displays more visually appealing than practical in open combat. But I believe I found a more appropriate method of utilizing it. Like so…**" With a sharp twist Erasmus whipped the sharp end out like a cannon shot, and the point was traveling fast enough to bury itself in the stone walls. "**Done from the cover of shadow your aunt, Taki, assassinated several of the high ranking generals that impeded my Eastward march back then.**" With one crisp tug his father dislodged the blade, re-coiled the "rope dart" and half-moved to replace it on the shelf; but seemed to change his mind and hung it on his belt instead. "**Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever used one myself. No time like the present to try, right?**"

He shrugged. "**Sure Old Man, whatever you say.**" His eyes drifted to the right, landed on something else, and stuck fast. "**Whoa, what is that?**" He took the two steps needed to reach the object, or weapon, and heft it from the rack. "**This thing looks nasty, ah, in a good way.**"

He didn't hear his father move, but the elder Overlord's voice emerged from just to his left. "**That, my boy, is one of my master-works that I salvaged from the wreckage of the Dark Tower, the Mace of Doom. I used it for a brief time on my first extra-worldly adventure, scattering an army with it like they were feathers.**" Erasmus's long, arcanium encased arm reached over his shoulder and lightly fingered one of the malefic flanges of the mace. "**In any case but this I would welcome you to take a practice swing or two, but doing so would utterly obliterate all sense of organization that I have in here.**" At his unabashedly confused look the Evil god elaborated. "**At the peak of each swing, this mace emits a shockwave that sends anything not otherwise attached to something extraordinarily sturdy flying like dust on the wind. Quite fun now that I think back on it, as was watching human heads pop like grapes from the blast.**"

He found himself smirking and nodding his head. "**Nice, sounds like one badass piece of hardware.**"

A moment of silence passed, while he debated with himself as to whether or not he should voice the idea that had popped into his head, but his father beat him to the punch, figuratively. "**If you like, you could try it out for our ensuing raid on the Navi. I certainly wouldn't mind.**"

Soul Calibur had been quiet up until now, but she absolutely erupted at this. "_Are you serious? First you all but stop using me in favor of those little pea-shooters; and now you even think about replacing me with a different melee weapon? How dare you!_"

Cringing away from the sword's outburst he responded. "**If you're so put off, why don't you just turn yourself into a gun?**"

Silence fell, as he expected all present were waiting for further outrage from the crystal blade, but it never arrived; and after a long while Soul Calibur finally came forth with a tiny admission. "_I, honestly never thought about that_."

His father chimed in abruptly. "**Ah, speaking of firearms, before I forget.**" He turned to face Erasmus, honestly curious now. "**That thing you do with your pistols, shooting with abandon, impunity, infinity. How do you do that? As you must have seen I managed only one shot at that fleeing craft before that gun you threw to me refused to fire any further.**"

He was stunned for a moment, but he shrugged and answered. "**Ah, well I kind of just think of bullets while dumping magic into the gun. Not enough to make the things explode but, well, you know.**"

Erasmus's left eye twitched upwards. "**Really, just that simple? Heh, I'll keep that in mind next time I touch a gun.**" The god leaned to the right, propping an elbow on a vacant section of shelving. "**You know, I wager that you thought I would never learn anything from you. How does it feel, being the superior?**"

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "**I tell you, it feels damn good. And while you're learning, maybe you could learn to relax a little?**"

His father was quiet for a second. "**I'm sorry, what?**"

He attempted to elaborate. "**You're always so stiff, formal. Cuss a little, slouch, you know, stuff like that.**"

Erasmus gave off the strong impression of a smirk, even though he couldn't actually see the god's face. "**No promises, but I'll endeavor to adjust my behavior slightly. I'll have you know though, don't expect me to curse anywhere near as much as you. Sophitia throws a silent fit every time she hears you, I can only imagine the earful I would get if I did the same. Not that she wasn't used to it by the time I acquired Soul Edge here, but I suppose the years have mellowed my, how do you say, gloating instincts.**" Laughing at his own joke the god straightened himself. "**On to business though, I think it high time we return to the front. Quaritch's men won't wait forever, and I really don't want to miss out on this figurative party.**" A portal opened at his father's behest and Erasmus gestured towards it. "**After you, son.**"

He hopped through the offered gateway, and for the first time he didn't have a problem with the familial term.

Pandoran Jungle: Navi Village

Erasmus Killgore was in a good mood, a very good mood. His relationship with Acheron was getting better by the day, he was about to lead a brutal blitz attack on a Navi village, and the day was still young. His only minor regret was that he would likely miss witnessing the devastation of the Hometree. But considering the wondrous technology the RDA seemed to possess; perhaps they had some way of preserving the images for him to view later?

He shot a slow glance over at Acheron, silently wincing at how the boy crashed through the brush without a trace of subtlety. Thankfully, the young man redeemed this lack of stealth with the intelligent choice of minions. The crowd of Green minions skittering along behind Acheron was as at home in this alien jungle as they were in the humid depths of Evernight, where Acheron had found the green hive. The small creatures had drawn curious gazes from the soldiers, but as of yet no one had objected openly. He considered this amazing, not for appearance, but for the horrid stench wafting off of the little green cretins. Flowers withered just by being in the same airspace, rotting corpses were preferable, a sewer overflowing with excrement… He could go on with the various pungent metaphors but that wouldn't make it smell any less. Instead he turned his attention ahead, where the outlines of Navi huts could be seen.

A light tap on his left arm stole his attention away and he turned to face the cause of the touch, one of the soldiers Quaritch had assigned to follow him. "**You have something to tell me?**"

The man, a dark skinned, bald fellow carrying a "shotgun" on a sling, offered him a small grey device. "I spot two sentries within range to compromise the infiltration; one at ground level and the other in the trees to the left."

He took a quick look, easily spotting the one on the ground but not seeing the other one. "**And I am assuming that this device you have given me is instrumental in locating the second sentry? How so?**"

The soldier hesitated for a moment. "Ah, they're thermal optics sir. You just look through them."

He closed his eyes and sighed quietly. Of course it would be that simple. Prompted thusly he brought the object up to the to the eye holes of his great helmet, blinked momentarily, and then turned the device around so that he was looking through the smaller glass lenses. He may have little experience with technology, but that by far did not make him an idiot. "Optics" was the hint he had needed, and "thermal" implied strongly that he was seeing the world on a spectrum of heat. Indeed, the green-scale image he was getting made sense if interpreted that way. The jungle itself was a uniform, sickly green, denoting that the wash of it was within a few degrees of the same temperature. Two spots though, the Navi sentry in the clear and a patch high in the branches glowed white, telling him that there was something there that was generating its own heat.

He handed the thermal optics back to the soldier and crept over to Acheron, taking great care to stay low and control the volume of his voice. "**Acheron, I would like for you to direct the minions up the tree here.**" He pointed out the one that contained the hidden sentry. "**Give me thirty to forty seconds to get into position, and then order the pounce. I will act accordingly once you do.**"

Mercifully, Acheron answered him with a simple, silent nod and moved to do as asked. He waited only long enough to watch the first of the green minions scamper up the flank of the great tree before spinning about and racing across the ground towards a different tree as fast as he could while maintaining the deathly silence this raid required. He reached his destination and skidded to a halt, the bulk of the growth directly between him and the two sentries. With a light grunt he sprang up onto the trunk, digging the claws of his gauntlets in for purchase and climbing a few feet higher. He shimmied around to a branch that led out into space directly above the first sentry and paused, debating silently with himself on how to handle the execution before an idea struck him. With a cruel smile he unhooked the cord of the rope dart from his belt and fed a short length into his waiting right hand.

A glance to his far left confirmed the beady, glittering eyes of Acheron's minions arrayed for the precursor ambush. In accordance, he slowly began to spin the bladed point of the rope dart over his head, waiting for the inevitable hissing of the Greens when they attacked. The signal came only seconds later, and with a mighty heave he threw the point with the force of a thunderbolt. Amusingly, or tragically depending on which perspective he took, the Navi looked up just before the point of the blade ripped through the alien equivalent of the sternum, getting trapped deep in the Navi's guts like it was designed to do.

Adding insult to injury he hopped back off of the branch, dragging the Navi's now lifeless body up with the still embedded rope and anchoring it in the ground before snapping of a mock salute to the swinging body. "**Thanks for hanging out.**"

There was no great outcry, from either Navi civilians or hidden RDA soldier, so he could only assume that both sentries had been silenced without incident. So he, once again, quietly made his way through the dense underbrush to where the RDA soldiers waited. The men looked anxious, understandable, but they also looked eager, ready and raring to exact bloody, violent vengeance at the first whiff of an order. That drive brought a genuine smile to his hidden face.

Acheron broke in on his thoughts, whispering over the ambient noise of the jungle. "**Now what? We're free and clear to bust on down in there and start swinging, right?**"

Such an appalling lack of tactical acumen actually caused him to freeze for a moment, but he recovered quickly enough so that he hoped his disbelief wasn't apparent. "**Not yet son. Sneak around to the other side of the village if you can, and then rush in the moment you hear an uproar.**" He waited until Acheron was far out of earshot before letting out a sigh. "**My word, I need to give that boy some lessons in the art of war.**"

One of the anonymous soldiers incredulously scoffed. "The 'art of war'? Come on."

He leveled a rebuke as soon as the soldier was done speaking. "**Yes, war is in fact an art. Have none of you ever read Sun Zhu?**" He shook his head in disappointment at the low chorus of negatives. "**Ugh, never mind. Now, are there any among you that is considerably skilled in matters of stealth?**"

One man crept forward, and a familiar face at that. "Lance Corporal Carlos Montoya, ready for action sir!"

He voiced his recognition. "**Ah, Carlos, from the Timpani tree.**" He briefly searched the faces of the other soldiers. "**Where is your friend Yogi?**"

An angry scowl crossed the face of the Latina. "He was stationed in the Lagoon, sir. So if you don't mind, I'd like to get down to the business of making each and every one of these _madre follando_ aliens regret the day we set foot on this planet."

A smirk lit up his black face. "**Now that is a good attitude.**" He glanced once towards the village. "**Take the left side, quiet as you can.**" He delivered parting orders to the rest of the men. "**Wait here until you hear shouting. Then, rush in and let Hell consume anything that stands in your way.**"

As he moved forward he took note of the layout of the small village, that of two rows of small huts and tents in two separate rows, entryways facing each other. There seemed to be ample space between each domicile to accommodate a normal man, but for his eight foot frame the fit might prove a slight bit more difficult.

His back lightly hit the first squat hut while his ears strained to hear any discernable sound of alarm. Instead though, close by all he heard beyond the inane ethnic gibberish of the Navi was a set of grunting and gasping that sounded disturbingly like, well, sex. He tuned it out and took a split-second glance around the edge of the hut, noting two Navi approaching on opposite sides of the crude street. With a couple of wrist contortions he gesticulated that knowledge to the RDA Latina before starting a simple countdown of three, two, one. At the first sign of blue he lashed out and latched his right hand over the alien's mouth. He dragged the alien a few feet into the cover of the shadows and used his free hand to punch through the Navi's chest cavity, ripping out what looked to be an allegory to a heart.

He glanced back at the Lance Corporal, finding that the young man had dragged the other Navi down with a knife blade to the throat and bodily hauled the large alien behind the hut in a rough imitation of what he himself had done. What was more impressive was the athleticism of the relatively normal man. Montoya had had to jump at least two feet just to reach the Navi's neck after all, and the soldier had been able to do so quietly on top of it. He wondered whether the feat was fueled by rage, idealism, or something else unstated. But, perhaps in the grand scheme of things it really didn't matter. The Latina gave him a thumbs up signal, and he responded with a sign to advance.

Following his own orders he ducked around the corner and inside the hut. Once there, he was confronted with, well, exactly what he had heard from outside. Two Navi entwined on the dirt floor, oblivious to all else in the throes of passion. A scowl of distaste twisted his mouth, and almost without thinking he unlimbered Soul Edge and drove the great sword's point right down through the ridge of spine he could see on the back of the Navi male. The shock made both of the dying thrash about, a grotesque parody of their former passion before the both expired with a drawn out groan. It momentarily occurred to him that such a sound might have given him away, but the lack of a reaction from outside banished such thought.

Just before he turned to exit the tent and continue the silent rampage a spark of inspiration hit him and he voiced it towards the dead lovers. "**So much for, 'till death do us part.**"

Before he could quietly laugh to himself over the pun a gunshot rang out, quickly followed by another, and another. Navi started screaming shortly after that, so it was safe for him to assume that the stealth aspect of the raid was quite over. He burst from cover to the sight of the RDA soldiers charging from the bushes, their thunderous roars of fury complimented by the bursts of flame and shot from their guns. The Navi, mostly non-combatants, quickly crumbled before this onslaught. The few warriors were easily visible, and riddled with bullets before he could even take a step towards them. Arrows flew, but by some strain of providence the heavy shafts found only the empty air between the berserking recon forces. And as their unofficial commander it made his black heart swell with pride at their zeal, so much so he simply stood aside and let the men storm past him. Let the glory be theirs, he would have plenty of opportunities to make up for this one instance of inaction.

Another voice floated over the carnage, another one that made him smile, the voice of his son. "**Whoo! Take it, take it you fucking pussies!**" This crass gloating was joined by the rhythmic explosive crash that he recalled associating with the Mace of Doom, so clearly Acheron was enjoying the weapon.

Ahead, in what could be called the center of the village, where the street swelled out into a larger clearing the Navi were getting corralled, trapped between the charging RDA soldiers on one end and a bombastic Overlord on the other. Certain individuals in the growing cluster were clearly keeping some manner of calm, as they began to flee towards the openings between the small huts. He smiled, certainly not about to let any of the aliens flee, and snapped his fingers once, summoning pillars of arcane fire in each and every one of those gaps. There would be no survivors on this day, no one left behind to share the tale of horror and destruction unleashed. All that would remain would be a story of justified, exhilarating vengeance among the men that had taken part. Invariably, the story would end up hugely inflated, telling that the Navi had outnumbered the men at least twenty to one, and had fled likes fleas from the light. The story might say that it had been a den of exclusively warriors, all armed and savagely fighting back tooth and nail. But that didn't matter to him, let soldiers have their egos. Let them have their morale boosts. Time would come when both would be tested.

He sauntered into the center of the village just as the last of the Navi were being executed, turning his attention to the soldier carrying the large pack that he recalled being some manner of communication device. "**If you haven't already, let Quaritch know that he is free to proceed at his discretion. The village has been silenced, permanently.**"

He disregarded the response, sure that his order would be carried out regardless of his continued input, and crossed the makeshift abattoir to his son, who was busy wiping imaginary blood and dust off of his armor. "**So Acheron, how was the Mace? Judging by your outbursts I can surmise that you were enjoying yourself quite a bit, yes?**"

The young man laughed and idly twirled the weapon around his wrist. "**It's fucking awesome. I haven't seen things blown into that many pieces since, well, ever.**"

He smiled. "**I thought you'd like it. Keep it if you wish; as a gift for all of those birthdays that I missed.**"

Before Acheron could say anything in response a low thrumming filled the air. That sound was only low for a moment however and quickly it swelled to a roar equivalent in impact to the charge of the RDA recon soldiers. The flying craft appeared at the climax of the noise, forcing leaves down from trees in a green blizzard as the metal behemoths passed overhead. Primal instinct led him to crane his neck back to watch the passage of those war machines, and he wondered if he imagined the sight of an odd pilot shooting him a comradely wave from the window of their craft. Hoots and hollers from the unoccupied recon troops chased Quaritch's aerial vanguard on their way, carrying wishes of death and violence, chaos and ruin, pain and destruction; those dark aspects of mankind on which he thrived. And oddly, there was an undercurrent of hope to it. The hope of a future for mankind lay in death, as it always had. The Navi would just have to learn that lesson the hard way.


	8. Internal Inquisition

Chapter 8: Internal Inquisition

Hell's Gate: Command Deck

Erasmus Killgore strode by the giant mass of communications equipment with only a cursory inspection. He wanted to know how it all worked, but he just didn't have the time at the present moment. War was such a drain on a man's patience, and even more so when it was an easy war. In point of fact, the only thing that could make this somewhat difficult, and only from a logistical standpoint, would be if all the Navi tribes banded together and overran the RDA with sheer numbers. And so far, he had no inclination that the Navi would do such a thing. Indeed, if there existed a catalyst that would incite such a unification he did not know of one and no one else had informed him of such. On that note, it would have been fortuitous if Dr Augustine had been still on hand so he could pick her brain for information.

He turned the corner to Colonel Quaritch's office, finding the grizzled veteran's fury completely unabated, to his minor concern. "**Colonel? I trust that the ambush went as cleanly on your end as it did for my excursion.**"

The officer shot him a glare that would have withered half the jungle on Pandora. "Yes and no. I didn't lose a single bird, but we didn't score a single kill either. The place was as empty as a graveyard." A malefic gleam appeared in the man's eyes and both fists pounded down once on the desk. "They knew we were coming. Somehow, they knew."

A twisted scowl appeared on his face. "**Troubling. The obvious conclusion to draw would be that they were informed by someone in the loop, so to speak. Though I find it difficult to believe that any of the soldiers would sell off their comrades for a misguided moral cause.**"

Quaritch matched his grimace. "You think I haven't considered that? I'd vouch for each man out and woman out there personally if I could."

He cut the Colonel off. "**Then let us assume for the moment that your men are blameless. Who remains that might have been privy to the knowledge that an attack was imminent? Possibly someone that might have a rapport with the traitorous Doctor Augustine or this Jake Sullivan that I hear of?**"

The man looked off into space for a time, but returned to reality quickly enough. "I can't believe that I didn't consider that. Those moronic ingrates…"

He coughed once, loudly. "**I would strongly suggest you put off your angry rant until after you inform me of who you just had an epiphany over; that way I can take care of the issue while you wallow in rage.**" He took an artful pause. "**Unless you feel you can, how do you say, power through it like the soldier you claim to be.**"

The veiled insult had the desired effect, and Quaritch regained his composure. "I'm not that weak." The soldiers eyes narrowed, fury well in check. "There is a pair of scientists left over from the Avatar program. Either of them could be the leak, or both of them."

An anticipatory smile twitched the corners of his mouth. "**Just give me names. I have ways of compelling people to show their true loyalties.**"

Quaritch fixed him with a scowl. "My people can handle it."

He took half a step forward, emphasizing his greater height. "**I'll rephrase then, give me the names so I can deal with the issue. Unless you want me idly sticking my nose in every other matter on this base out of rampant curiosity and boredom.**"

The thought alone was enough to sway the Colonel. "Fine. Max Patel and Norm Spellman."

He smiled and gave the veteran a curt nod. "**Very well. I'll have the impunity to apply my queries as I see fit, of course. You won't object to that now, will you?**"

He may have been being quite polite, but there was no mistaking the subtle air of command that he was using. Quaritch surely knew that, and the man undoubtedly was also aware that he was going to get his way regardless of objections, hence the acquiescence.

The Colonel responded. "Get me results and I could care less about how you got them."

He made a half bow, speaking with mock humility. "**As you wish Colonel.**" He dropped the act. "**In all seriousness though, I would advise your men to steer clear of me when I begin my interrogation. I doubt they will have the stomach to watch.**"

He turned and strode out of the small office without another word, pausing only briefly to examine the fairly beautiful red, white, and blue flag on the wall under glass. He considered turning back to inquire as to the origins, but decided to save that conversation for another time.

Still on the move, he placed the first two fingers of his right hand to the side of his helmet, an odd unconscious motion but one he saw no reason to change, and attempted to telepathically contact his bride Isabella. After a few moments of trying and not receiving a response he was forced to conclude that either Ivy was asleep, or he couldn't reach her because of some cross-dimensional malarkey. If she was asleep then it was reasonable to assume the same for the other three women, so that left him one efficient option. He tried again, directing his thoughts towards the single oldest resident of the Netherworld, Gnarl.

The ancient minion responded to his thoughts almost instantly. "Oh! Master, what can I do for his Evilness?"

He sighed internally. Gnarl was finally starting to degrade into senility, which showed him that the minions did indeed have a limited lifespan. As if that truly mattered in the long run. Most minions died horribly long before they reached Gnarl's age, which was advanced enough that he wasn't quite sure just how high the number had climbed. The ancient minion had served at least his past three predecessors, so it was undoubtedly significant.

With effort, he suppressed his irritation and spelled out his instructions as simply as he could manage. "**Gnarl, wake Isabella and tell her to gather her 'toys,' I have a special job for her.**"

Gnarl produced a halting affirmation, but only a few seconds later asked a question abruptly. "Ah, what was it you wanted me to do again?"

An exasperated sigh escaped him. "**Never mind, I'll just do it myself.**"

He held out his right hand and gestured lightly, inducing the portal home to appear in the air to the shock of the surrounding people. He paid the startled people no mind, and darted through homeward. After all, if he was going to torture information out of someone it'd certainly be insensitive of him to deny Isabella the right to join in on one of her favorite pastimes. Well, actually thinking it like that would lead one to believe Ivy had many pastimes, which was inaccurate. She had three, namely; fighting, torture, and sex. Not that those things were all she did, only it was during those activities did he really see that hardened woman smile. That made it worth it. In keeping with that line of thought, his mind turned towards just how he would carry out his impending appointment with two potentially traitorous scientists as the world around him became the familiar obsidian walls of the Netherworld.

Hell's Gate:

Acheron sat in the back corner of what the people around him were calling the "mess hall," silently watching the soldiers and support staff mingling over food. Which, on that topic, the green paste looked decidedly unappetizing. The people were avoiding him like the plague, which was something he was currently debating the use of. Certainly the quiet and opportunity to silently eavesdrop on whichever conversation he wished was nice, but he wasn't so sure about the reason he assumed that they were avoiding him. He assumed they were afraid, just judging from the few peeks and sly glances sent his way. Then again, maybe his little performance of electrocuting that girl that had shot at him had gotten around and the other humans simply didn't want the same thing to happen to them if they looked at him funny. Which was kind of ironic since they were giving him funny looks right now.

Just as he was about to stand and start forcing the RDA grunts to start socializing with him a female voice came in from his immediate right. "Ah, excuse me sir?" He turned his head towards the sound and the young woman started sputtering. "Oh, I thought, I was looking for-"

He finished the statement with a smirk growing on his face. "**My old man? Sure, makes sense. Everyone's always looking for him instead of me anyway.**"

The woman, a young blonde with blue-green eyes wearing what appeared to be standard fare for the RDA soldiers, made a show of waving her hands. "No, no, I wanted to meet you too I just. I thought your father would be interested in the dossiers of the people he's going to question." A nervous smile crept across the woman's lips. "I mean, I overheard him talking with the Colonel and just thought, well…"

He started chuckling. "**Well, I don't know where exactly my dad warped off to, but I guess I could pass along whatever it is that you collected for him.**" He held out his left hand. "**Of course it'd help if I knew your name miss…?**"

The blonde took the offered hand and daintily shook it. "Lisa, Lisa Ryder. I'm one of the people that first made contact with your father." She let go and picked up a small stack of papers on the table. "And um, here, everything we have: family status, personal references, psych evaluations… anything I could piece together."

He accepted the parcel and aimed his critical eye on the woman herself, voicing his thoughts only moments after. "**You're pretty cute actually, and apparently smart too. Not a bad combination.**"

Soul Calibur whispered in his head. "_You and your insatiable libido. What, not enough variety back home?_"

He ignored the weapon while his blunt praise took effect on the young woman, and waited for her response. "Oh, ah, thank you. Um…" Lisa's words trailed off into low, nervous laughter.

Before he could make another advance, and a more pointed one, a loud crash drew his attention to the far side of the mess hall. A lone soldier was standing, mouth agape, and staring at something with the utmost intensity. A quick check revealed that the same was true for all of the other men in the room. So what exactly were they…

A voice called out that he recognized, and it answered both of his questions. "What's the matter, you all act as if you've never seen a woman before."

His eyes tracked the sound to the other entrance of the mess hall to the source, his aunt Ivy. The tall, silver-haired woman was clad in a red leather bustier, thigh-high red boots, elbow length red gloves, and frankly not much else. It might have made more of an impact on him if he weren't used to the sight, and if she weren't family. It was the same kind of awkward as when he caught himself staring at his sister, Persephone. Oh man, speaking of, he could only imagine that men would have passed out from blood loss if that girl walked in.

Erasmus's voice followed, gently chiding his aunt. "**Come now Isabella, you've had your fun. We have something more pressing to attend to, remember?**"

Ivy's crass laughter grew slowly louder as the sadist crossed the hall with his father close by. "Well it's not my fault if people can't help but stare. I'd think you'd get a bit of a kick out of watching actually."

The god of Evil replied instantly. "**Oh I never said I didn't. Watching you grandstand for jealous onlookers is incredibly amusing, just we have something of a timetable to stick to.**" The oncoming pair reached both him and Lisa and his father was the first to speak. "**Acheron, enjoying yourself I hope?**"

He shrugged noncommittally. "**Can't complain right now. The company is certainly fine.**"

Erasmus nodded once. "**Good to hear. Now, I must ask, have you ever had cause to interrogate someone?**"

He started to open his mouth to say 'of course,' but shut it for a moment before admitting the truth. "**Ah, no. I guess I never needed to. But, couldn't I just whip out the Evil Presence spell whenever I want to know something?**"

His father nodded once. "**That may be the case. But I have, on occasion, encountered individuals that retain the presence of mind, while dominated, to provide only a part of the whole truth. They technically follow the orders that they were given, but an omission can lead to vastly differing results.**" The Evil god gave off the impression of a smile. "**I like to think I have devised methods that prevent such omissions when employing purely physical and mental means, none of arcane origin.**"

His mind put two and two together and he voiced that conclusion. "**And you plan to demonstrate?**"

Erasmus started to speak, but Ivy beat him to the first word. "Well of course, why do you think he brought me along? I do, after all, have a bit of a special touch for this sort of thing."

Recalling Gnarl's stories, he really wasn't surprised. "**So, what, you're going to whip the truth out of them with a thorny vine? That's your big secret?**"

The leather-clad woman stuck her nose in the air. "Please, that little side effect wore off years ago. I'll grant you that it was rather fun while it lasted and…" Ivy's left hand rose and tucked a tuft of silver hair behind an ear, revealing the decidedly elven-looking extended tip. "… Certain looks are available to me that just don't work on others. And I do still like the overall motif."

A low, bass rumble of what could only be called lust sounded off from deep in his father's throat. "**You're not the only one, my bloody Valentine.**"

He felt his eyes start twitching. "**Hey, dude, knock it off. You're creeping me out.**"

Erasmus's blood-red eyes snapped toward him. "**Oh? I'm 'creeping' you out by showing public affection for my wife, your aunt? That's quite rich, particularly since you seem to have no concern for doing the same thing within sight of your mother, whose sensibilities are quite perturbed by your rampant, and I stress, public, sexuality.**"

Taken aback for a second, he uttered a question out of reflex. "**Ah, mom has a problem with me kissing my mistresses in front of her?**"

His father took a step closer and lowered his voice. "**Please, if it were only kissing you were doing I doubt Sophitia would have an issue. When you do just about everything up to, but not quite at, coitus then there becomes something of a problem.**" Erasmus took a half step back and his voice returned to a normal volume. "**Now, you know where your aunt and I will be, I'd like if you would drop by and at least observe.**"

Without another word the elder Overlord departed through the opposite door of the mess hall, his aunt following close behind. Eyes followed the pair, for varying reasons.

He turned his attention back to Lisa, chuckling lightly. "**Heh, well ah, I should probably go and see what dad's doing, you know, family stuff. See you around, doll.**"

He could feel the blonde giving him the eye as he walked away; just for once he wasn't sure what exactly the intent was behind it.

Hell's Gate: RDA Interrogation Chamber

Erasmus leaned back against the metal wall of the chamber, little more than a metal box with a one-way window, silently watching the dark-skinned, overweight, Max Patel. The scientist had probably been sitting in this room for the past hour since Quaritch's men had seized him and his assumed accomplice Norm Spellman, so the clear show of anxiety displayed by the quivering, bespectacled man, was very understandable. Further, for a man of supposed "science," being confined with someone that defied all preconceived notions of how the universe worked would be doubly unnerving, and compound that with being silently scrutinized for five minutes or so. The pudgy man was sweating beads of perspiration the size of marbles.

He broke the silence, filling his voice with undisguised malevolence as he lightly leaned on the table in the center. "**So, Mr. Patel, I'm going to cut to the heart of the matter at hand. You have this one opportunity to be forthright and reveal all of your surreptitious actions in aid of the Navi. Fail to do so, and you would be strongly distressed to know the details of what is planned for you.**"

Patel, predictably, did not take the offer. "I, I don't know what you're talking about."

He drew back, reassuming his full height. "**On your head be it then.**" He whistled sharply once before speaking. "**Isabella, that would be your cue.**"

At his signal the single door opened to admit his second bride. Ivy held only one thing, a tall metal bucket that produced a soft rustling sound as the woman idly let it sway back and forth. Patel started to ask the foolish question of what it was, but he leveled his right hand towards the scientist and let loose with one jolt of Evil Presence, enough to compel physical obedience but no more.

He spoke and gesticulated an order to the bound Patel. "**Lie down on the table, belly up like the worm you are.**" A few seconds passed while his order was haltingly obeyed before his left hand dove into the bucket and removed its solitary denizen. "**I trust that your eyes work Dr. Patel, that you can see this specimen that I've brought to partake in this little misadventure?**"

The specimen in question was an overlarge rat, clearly showing signs of mutation due to magical overexposure. Its fangs alone were over two inches in length. Much more and the vermin would likely have starved due to an inability to consume anything. Patches of its fur had fallen out, only to be replaced with rough, semi-reptilian scales. The beady little eyes glowed faintly, a sickly blue that spoke of corruption and decay. Just the sight was enough to send Patel into a frantic bought of hyperventilating and borderline crying fits.

As he dangled the creature a scant hairs-breadth over Patel's quivering body Isabella voiced a thought. "Darling, may I be the one to explain what's going to happen?"

He glanced up from the scientist's tormented face and nodded once. "**Be my guest dear. Just be sure to make it a vivid as you are able.**"

A cruel chuckle escaped Ivy as she lightly set a gloved hand on the edge of the table. "Now, first a bit of a fun fact before we start. Did you know that the average rat can chew through iron or steel if given enough time? I'm sure I don't need to tell you that people are far softer than iron or steel. So…" He placed the mutated rat on the man's stomach before the leather-clad woman swiftyly covered it with the bucket. "Erasmus, care to lend a light?" The index finger on his left hand began to burn and he set it on the top of the metal pail, quickly causing the immediate surrounding metal to glow a soft, cherry red. "Now when it gets hot the rat is going to want out, and he'll have only one way to go, down."

A feminine shriek issued from the pudgy scientist. "It bit me!"

Malicious laughter seeped out of his mouth. "**Already? My, it seems this rat has a bit of a taste for human flesh already. It hardly needed any encouragement.**"

Patel screamed again. "Ok! I'll talk, just get this thing off of me!"

He kept his blazing digit pressed firmly to the bucket, egging the rat on. "**Speak first, if I believe you then you will cease to be eaten. What have you told Jake Sullivan and Doctor Augustine?**"

Patel's resistance crumbled like chalk in water. "I told them about the base in Graves Bog, that it's undermanned!"

He still did not relent. "**What about Sullivan and Augustine, where are they?**"

Patel's extremities started twitching, even though Evil Presence compelled the scientist to remain still. "Grace is at Site 23, in the Hanging Gardens! Jake's somewhere else, I don't know where, I swear it!"

He waited for five long seconds, before speaking. "**… I believe you.**" He flicked the bucket off and killed the rat with a pinch to its fragile neck. "**Mr. Patel, you will henceforth be utilized to funnel misinformation to Sullivan and his adoptive people at my discretion. Should you feed any information that I or Quaritch have not personally vetted I will have another rat visit you, one which I will not in any way stop from gnawing straight through your bones.**"

Patel was in a decidedly sorry state; sweating so much that it was pooling on the table and dripping off onto the floor, thumb-sized bloody gouges in his stomach where the rat had bitten, and still bound to be completely still be Evil Presence. However one quick finger snap removed that hindrance. The compulsive convulsing proceeded immediately afterwards. He could have allowed the binding to remain, but that would have left a telltale halo of crackling energy around Patel's head that would tip Sullivan off should he contact the worm of a human.

A tapping sound on the glass of the one way mirror drew his attention to the head of his son Acheron, who was revealing himself via portal use to stick his head through the glass from the observation room. "**So ah, that was very informative. I'll, um, definitely remember that lesson for all future encounters.**" The boy chuckled nervously. "**I, think I'm going to go do something else. You can find me if you need me.**"

Acheron's head pulled back through the portal and vanished, leaving him quite concerned. Had he just effectively traumatized his son? Things had been going so well up to now. Oh he should have considered that perhaps Acheron did not have the mental constitution to witness Isabella's particular brand of pain-dealing, and he had thought it was fairly mild. He should have remembered that he was inured to the sights and sounds of torture, having precipitated more than his fair share of equally violent episodes.

Ivy's musing filtered into his head, over his brooding and the continuing sobs of Max Patel. "That was far too easy. He barely lasted a full minute before breaking."

He turned to his bride. "**If you feel robbed you may do as you please with the other one, Norm Spellman. Just whatever depravities you wish to apply, make sure he dies at the end. It will strengthen Patel's credibility if Sullivan is led to believe that his mole is somewhat safe and found a scapegoat. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go and track down Acheron.**"

Hell's Gate: Defunct Avatar Lab

Acheron chuckled to himself as he tapped away on the keyboard in front of him; bringing up one stupid image after another that made him laugh over and over. He was doing this for two reasons. One, he was in need of a good joke and this "internet" seemed to have an endless supply of humor. Two, he had to get that mental image of a rat swimming through people guts out of his brain. He had heard Gnarl's stories of course, of how much his aunt liked to torture people, but seeing it firsthand was another experience entirely. And his dad taking part, he wasn't sure how much of that cruelty was showcasing for Patel's detriment or genuine glee. Looking at pictures with funny captions and people doing stupid things took his mind off of it.

At least it did, until a voice rang out of the near-dark. "**Acheron?**"

He silently cursed. Sure, he could close his eyes and turn off the screen in front of him to blend in with the dark almost flawlessly. But considering the impression he was starting to get about his father's sensory abilities he'd only slightly delay the inevitable. The god would just smell him out, or hear his breathing, or, hell, just see through the dark like it wasn't even there.

Sure of eventual discovery, he answered the query. "**Yeah? Back here.**"

Promptly, his father's blood-red eyes appeared in his periphery vision, casting a faint infernal glow over the darkened lab. So it sort of lent credence to his last thought, how darkness didn't matter to his Old Man. He typed a few more commands into the computer, silently thinking over what he was going to say when the elder Overlord started questioning his emotional state and such.

Erasmus stopped moving, standing just outside of the cone of light generated by the computer screen. "**Son, I hope that you were not inordinately disturbed by that display. If you were I apologize, though I am aware such an action will do nothing to banish the images from you mind. I-**"

He started talking, mostly just to stop his father from doing the same. "**Whoa there, chill out dad. Don't worry about it. I'm an adult, I can deal with it.**" He chuckled nervously. "**Just, in the future I'm going to be as far away from Aunt Ivy as possible whenever she's indulging her, ah, hobby.**"

His father nodded obligingly. "**Of course, I'll make it a priority to warn you in advance should I become aware of any, ah, impending sessions.**"

An uneasy silence fell. He was no expert on conversation but even he could tell that there were things that both of them were holding back that they wanted to say. He didn't know what Erasmus was holding onto, but his own misgivings would hang over him like a storm cloud if he didn't say something.

Haltingly, he spoke of his concern. "**Hey, that bit of showmanship back there, you don't actually enjoy doing that stuff to people, do you? I mean combat's one thing, but…**"

Erasmus took a while to respond. "**Depending on the situation, yes, yes I do. But for that situation to be correct I must have something of a personal connection to the matter at hand. Like when your deceased aunt was murdered, I took great delight in making her murderer pay dearly, in pain. And I'm sure Gnarl told you about Hildegard Von Krone, considering that it was Hildegard that personally killed that wizened old minion. Those two events I enjoyed immensely. This, episode I should call it, with Dr. Patel was a chore, nothing more. As for Isabella, yes, she enjoys the simple act of it, regardless of the victim. But I imagine that you were aware of that already.**"

He forced himself to laugh. "**Yeah, I knew that. But I feel better knowing that you're not nearly as crazy as Aunt Ivy.**"

His father let out a long sigh. "**Well, that's quite the relief. I was sure I had in some way scarred you.**" The god glanced at the still glowing computer screen. "**Now what's this contraption you're toying around with?**"

His attitude improved dramatically, given the opportunity to educate his father. "**This, Old Man, is a computer. And what is on the computer, is the Internet. What I so far like to think of as the largest collection of crap ever generated by mankind. Of course that also means that it's funny as hell. Look…**"

With only a few quick keystrokes he brought up one of his newly favorite "memes" for his father to look at. He had a feeling what the elder Overlord's reaction would be, but it would be so much better to see or hear it.

Erasmus watched the indicated video, and the confusion was obvious from the first few seconds to the explosive finish. "**Well, that is certainly, hmm, the stupidest and yet most amusing thing I've seen is quite some time.**"

An idea popped into his head and he blurted it out immediately. "**Hey, you're pretty much a grandmaster sorcerer right? So, you think you could duplicate that?**"

His father's expression remained decidedly enigmatic. "**Play it again.**" Silence, save for the bombastically loud video, fell for the duration of the clip. "**I suppose I could cobble some kind of rudimentary spell together with that effect. It wouldn't be quite the same but I daresay that isn't the point of you asking.**"

This time, his laughter was earnest. "**Hey, I don't care if it's spot on. Just so long as you do use it when we act on whatever info you got out of that pudgy idiot.**" He started to get the sense that his father wasn't all that enthused about the idea. "**Tell you what, do this and we're square on the whole torture thing. I'll never bring it up again and you can wipe it from your conscience.**"

Erasmus let out a light huff. "**Well, that doesn't leave me much choice now does it? Very well, at the next available opportunity I will use this 'meme' upon the Navi. You will hear it, whether you be beside me or on the other side of the world.**"

He kept laughing, anticipating good times ahead, at least for him.


	9. Sword and Shield

Chapter 9: Sword and Shield

Hell's Gate: Command Deck

Again, Acheron found himself gathered up around the big see-through, or "holographic," representation of the planet, attending another sort of war council between mostly his father and Colonel Quaritch. The only real difference this time was that his aunt was standing to his right, slightly behind his father. Why she was still here he couldn't say, as he was certain that Ivy had gotten to the second guy, whoever that had been. In his mind that meant that there really wasn't any further purpose for his aunt to be there, but she was, so he should probably move on.

Quaritch was leaning forward on the display, both hands spread out. "So, it was Patel who tipped off the Navi?"

Erasmus corrected the statement. "**Not quite, both Patel and Spellman were working in conjunction, if one is to believe Isabella and her methods, which I do.**" The god's right hand reached up to the hologram, shifting the sphere around until a blue box was enlarged and in focus. "**This is the last piece of intel that Patel passed along, an assessment on this installation in the area the soldiers refer to as Grave's Bog, a very negative assessment.**"

The Colonel grumbled in assent. "True, that area hasn't exactly been a priority since the end of the last war as it's fairly deep in the former Timpani territory. The garrison should be just over twenty men not counting support staff, as skeletal as it gets."

Erasmus continued. "**And so that places us in a fairly difficult position. How are we to act upon this intelligence without tipping our hand to the natives?**"

Just the way the god said that drew a comment out of him. "**Tip our hand?' What, you mean something like poker?**"

His father nodded. "**Yes actually, that is a very accurate simile. We're sitting on a full house, when we must convince the enemy that we have a measly pair.**" Erasmus went on, blowing up the holographic base still further. "**I took the liberty of taking a gander at the construction of the outpost prior to this conversation, and I must say the prospects are rather bleak. Only four wire gates bar access to the inner compound on all four sides, gates that can easily be breached by whatever means the Navi utilized to break into Blue Lagoon. Twenty men, five per front, they won't last long under mass attack, and that seems like all the Navi are capable of thus far.**" The elder Overlord lowered his hands and his voice became grave. "**Unless we want history repeating itself we somehow need to get reinforcements to the installation, and on a very short timeframe.**"

Quaritch scowled lightly. "And I suppose you mean you and your boy?"

Erasmus's head shook. "**If absolutely necessary, though I had a far different target in mind for myself.**" His father spun the see-through planet again. "**In addition to this early warning I also managed to extract the location of Doctor Augustine, here, in the Hanging Gardens. No specific coordinates, though I can narrow that down extremely quickly if I go there in person.**"

It dawned on him what the plan was. "**So you want me to back up the base while you hunt down the Doctor.**"

A ghostly impression of a smile flashed his way from within the shadowed helm of his father's armor. "**That is what I had been thinking, provided you agree to it of course.**" That helm turned towards Quaritch. "**I imagine that a single Samson will not arouse undue suspicion amongst the Navi, and that a lone flight can arrive in time to render aid?**"

A slightly malicious smile lit up the Colonel's face. "I'll get the flights prepped immediately. We can get one of you out to Grave's Bog in little over fifteen minutes if the pilot pushes it, and I intend to make sure they push it."

As Quaritch walked off to see to his self-appointed task Erasmus turned back towards him. "**So you agree? You will assist the RDA soldiers in the Bog while I hunt down Augustine?**"

He shrugged. "**Sure, I mean it's probably going to be far more action packed than stomping through the brush following your nose.**" He chuckled a little. "**That is how you're going to track her down right? Using your godly sense of smell?**"

His father echoed the short laugh. "**I do believe that is the plan, yes. And though it may be masked by several hundred other smells once I take to the field I remember her scent quite distinctly, if only for the reason that I found her attitude extremely vexing.**"

Out of nowhere, Ivy chimed in. "**If that's the case, I'm going with Junior. I want action, not hunting.**"

He shot a sideways glance at his aunt in her red-leather bodysuit. "**Ah, don't you think you're a little underdressed to be participating in a battle where the enemy shoots poison arrows as big as my arm?**"

The silver-haired woman just crossed her arms and smirked. "I can take care of myself, nephew."

His father added to the conversation. "**I hate to criticize, but Acheron does have a point even if he does not know it. Normal humans, and even if you do not wish to admit it dear you are far closer to normalcy than either Acheron or I, are required to wear a special breathing mask to survive outside of the buildings. Without one, you apparently will not survive for more than a minuet.**"

Ivy shrugged the concern off. "Pft, I can handle that."

Erasmus nodded once, slowly. "**Very well. Now why don't you go on ahead and find yourself a spare mask, I would like to have a word in private with Acheron.**" The god wrapped an arm around his shoulder and tugged him aside. "**Look, as confident as I am in Isabella's abilities, I'd appreciate it if you could keep an eye out for her safety anyway.**"

He glanced over at his aunt's retreating figure, eyes uncomfortably draw towards her swaying derriere, and shrugged once he tore his gaze away. "**Sure, I can do that. So long as you do what you agreed to do on your hunting trip.**"

The elder Overlord let out a short chuckle. "**Don't worry Acheron, I haven't forgotten.**" His father gave him a light shove towards the door. "**Now go on, go kick some ass.**"

A smile appeared on his face and he flashed a thumbs up sign towards his father. "**That's it, lighten it up Old Man.**" On his way out the door he paused and called back. "**Hey, happy hunting, give the bitch my regards.**"

Erasmus returned the thumbs up. "**I will. Good fortune to you in the Bog. May many fall by your gun.**"

He left the command building in high spirits, itching for action.

Hanging Gardens:

Erasmus stepped off of the Samson and found himself surrounded by what looked to be an RDA base, or at least the remains of one. The closer he looked the more it seemed to be the latter. There were gaps in the metal shells of the buildings, the yellow mechanical behemoths scattered around seemed very, very far from functioning, and so far as his eyes could see there was no one else but him to the distant edge of the tree line.

The pilot of the Samson, a woman he had never seen before, called out to him from within the craft. "Look, I know you probably have something important to do here, but I'm not sticking around to figure out what it is. No one else has been here since the end of the war, and the jungle is already taking everything over again. I'm getting the hell out of here back to the Needle Hills. You call when you do whatever you have to do."

Without waiting for a response from him the pilot spun up the engine and took off, threading a small hole in the green canopy overhead. Once the sound of whirling rotors faded into the distance an almost deafening quiet descended, as if the jungle were holding its breath, waiting for the inevitable eruption of violence. His gaze swung left and right, alert for even the slightest disturbance in the brush around him, but there was none. With a single bound he leapt to the top of one of the ruined pieces of machinery for a better vantage point, but still his piercing vision revealed nothing. Convinced that he was, at least for the time being, alone, but still exceedingly wary, he took his focus off of sight and turned to smell. Even as the air stung the inside of his nose as he drew it in he could discern the scent of his prey on the wind. But as soon as he caught the scent the wind shifted and the smell vanished. He could, however, take a rough guess as to the origin of the scent. He turned to his right, geographic North according the GPS device still strapped to his gauntlet.

Eyes narrowed with determination he jumped down from his vantage point and set off for the edge of the foliage. Little more than half-way across the cleared area though a branch snapped loudly close by and he froze, once again on high alert. His eyes swung to the pile of brush which had produced the noise and he waited. After a long moment, just long enough to the point where he almost started to think that he had imagined the noise, a single Navi burst from cover and charged him wielding a jagged bone blade. Quicker than an eye could blink he ripped Soul Edge off of his back and hurled the blade to impact dead center of the lone Navi's chest. Silence fell again, as deafening as before, but there was a sense of lightness to it, as though he were no longer being observed by those with openly hostile intent.

He moved to inspect the corpse and retrieve his weapon, ignoring the complaints of said weapon about being thrown. As for the body, there was a distinct lack of tribal tattoos. So, what did that mean exactly? Was this Navi an outcast? Feral? Chose to leave willingly? He shook his head as possibilities swirled around inside his brain. Right now he didn't have the time for an internal academic debate.

He tensed up as the wind shifted again, once more bringing Augustine's scent to his sensitive nose. This breeze was stronger, and he had a very good idea of direction out of it. A yet to be determined distance away to the North-West Dr. Grace Augustine was cowering amongst her Navi allies, just waiting for him to crash their little nature-loving party.

Grave's Bog:

Acheron craned his neck back to watch his former ride fly away into the sky, slightly queasy internally but utterly determined to not show it in any way. He'd been here for, what, twenty seconds and he already knew why the place was called Grave's Bog, the smell of rot was absolutely pervasive, so much so that he was momentarily concerned that it might stick to his armor and body for long enough that he'd scare off his mistresses when he went home. Then again, he'd probably smelt far, far worse when he'd first run into Boa Hancock, but that shouldn't really count because he didn't get into her good graces, or panties, until later.

Before he had taken two steps away from the departing aircraft Soul Calibur's voice filled his head. "_Thinking perverted thoughts again?_"

He shot a half-second glance at the weapon as he walked further into the base. "**To a degree, always. Just now though, only a little bit.**"

A giggle escaped the crystal weapon. "_Ooh, can I guess about who you were thinking?_"

He stepped into what seemed like the center and stopped. A strange feeling washed over him, one of inexplicable vulnerability. To his left and right a large lane ran straight through from one end of the wire-enclosed compound to the other. And after a quick check he discovered an identical situation to his front and back. Each lane ended on both ends with large, extremely flimsy looking gates. There were of course big mounted guns above each, but he remembered what had happened at Blue Lagoon. Those manned guns were just glowing targets to the Navi.

Soul Calibur barked at him. "_Hey! I'm talking to you!_"

A soldier was approaching him tentatively, so he quietly shushed the female weapon. "**Give me a second, alright babe?**" He turned his gaze towards the approaching soldier. "**Sup?**"

Clearly taken aback by his casual greeting the soldier, a lean, pale faced man with matted black hair, responded hesitantly. "Ah, who the hell are you?"

He glanced over at his aunt, who was staring off into the jungle intently, before responding. "**Acheron Killgore, Overlord, and today, your savior.**" The man started to sputter but he cut the soldier off before they could start speaking. "**Look buddy, now, how do I say this, oh, you're about to get hit, and I'm here to make sure all of you don't die.**" He shrugged lightly. "**Or, failing that, to kill all the Navi. Whichever happens first.**"

Still relatively speechless, the soldier stammered out a question. "How, how do you know we're about to be attacked? The Timpani cleared out of here weeks ago. I heard they were almost wiped out."

Again, he shrugged nonchalantly. "**It's not the Timpani. And as for how I know, well, a fat mole told me, indirectly.**" He pointed up at the big wall-mounted guns. "**But right now the most important thing you've got to do is get those guys up there off of those guns. Because they're the absolute first thing the Navi are going to shoot at.**"

Hesitant, the man nonetheless seemed to accept his logic and callout to the one of the men on the wall guns. "Hey Ramirez, get down here."

The man dubbed Ramirez stood up and turned to face the interior of the base. "What's going-"

Without warning the ex-gunner was speared from behind by three Navi arrows and pitched forward off of the wall to lie face down in the dirt. Panic erupted as the other wall gunners scrambled out of their seats and made the substantial jump to the forest floor, shouts of "we're under attack" rose up, and general mayhem threatened to ruin his day.

He spoke up, easily making himself heard over the bedlam. "**Everyone shut up!**"

Like magic, the nineteen remaining soldiers clustered together in the center just in front of him. Maybe it was just his animal magnetism, but more than likely they were looking for someone to tell them what to do. Soldiers were like that, or so he was starting to believe.

He took a deep breath, only half-noticing the burning sensation, and outlined a basic plan. "**Ok, we've got, what, nineteen guys left? So let's make it six, six, and seven on the South, East, and West gates. I can take a whole army by myself so I've got North covered. Take cover behind the buildings, and try not to get impaled.**" He thought for a second to see if he had overlooked anything, not thinking of any oversights he continued. "**Sound good?**"

His aunt's voice drifted over the group. "Make it nine and ten on East and West. I can take a whole gate by myself as well."

He blinked slowly as he looked over at Aunt Ivy, whom was playfully twirling her sword between two fingers in her left hand. "**Ah, ok, if that's what you want. You take the South gate then.**" His eyes drifted back to the soldiers. "**Ok, well, you heard her. Spread out, try not to die, and shoot everything blue. Simple.**"

He made a quarter turn to the North and started walking, and he made it about four steps before Soul Calibur started whispering in his head. "_So, can I ask you now?_"

He kept walking, but his voice made quite clear how befuddled he was. "**You're still hung up on who I was thinking about? You aren't, I don't know, more excited about killing stuff?**"

The weapon snapped back at him. "_We kill stuff all the time. But I don't always get the chance to pester you about things._"

He scoffed as he portaled through the North gate to the outside. "**Really? That's your logic? Well fine, it was Hancock. Happy?**"

The weapon grumbled as he pulled her from his belt with his left hand. "_Oh, spoilsport, I wanted to guess._"

He ignored the remark and stepped further away from the base, brandishing Soul Calibur before him while arming his right hand with the Mace of Doom. "**Hey, blue freaks, I'm right here, come and get me!**" He whispered to the crystalline weapon as the bushes frothed with imminent attackers. "**You ready babe?**"

The re-formed Soul Calibur laughed as he raised her. "_I was made ready._"

As the first Navi burst from hiding to charge him he aimed along the crystalline black spines along the length of Soul Calibur's new barrel, drawing a bead on the face of the first club wielding native. He pulled her trigger, producing a sound like an electrical discharge as a blue fountain of flame spat out of the crystal gun. Seemingly in slow motion his first target flash froze in mid step and shattered like glass, pieces of shrapnel flying off in wild directions and wounding the surrounding Navi.

Elated and astonished he looked at his new gun for half a second of dumbstruck awe. "**Babe, you are fucking awesome!**"

Giggling while spitting electric death, Soul Calibur responded. "_I know I am._"

He shot three more Navi, killing maybe twice that number with shrapnel, before a sound started to tease his ears; a low, thundering rumble that grew steadily louder until it rivaled and quickly surpassed the Navi war cries. The ground beneath him shook as a large beast emerged from the foliage about a ship's length away from him. It was massive, red, blue stripes, and had a horn on its apparent nose that ended in a bulb that looked amusingly, or disturbingly, like a penis.

A realization dawned upon him as the animal charged. "**Oh… So that's how they bust through the gates.**" Reality set back in with a jolt when he realized he was about to be trampled. "**Oh shit!**"

Purely out of reflex he swung the Mace of Doom at the rushing creature, swinging up from his hip and striking the beast on the chin. The subsequent detonation of the mace's shockwave caused the animal's head to explode like an over-ripe melon. Further, what was left of the creature performed a shocking backwards somersault from the impact, transferring all of its forward momentum up and back. That was apparently how badass his father's Mace was.

A thought occurred to him as he resumed shooting at the natives. "**Wait, they wouldn't have been stupid enough to bring just one…**"

Literally the second after he voiced this thought to himself a cry rose up from inside the chain-link walls of the base. "Sturmbeasts!"

Sure that the Navi trying to killing him, with extra emphasis on "trying," would still be here if he took a short break he jumped back through the intact North gate, using a portal again so as to not damage it. As it would happen the East and West gates had been breached by the rampaging animals. Clearly, normal bullets and firepower was simply not enough to deter these creatures, so they probably had a brain about the size of a pea, or less. Oddly enough that brought to mind something Gnarl had once told him about dragons, which was completely unrelated on a topic basis but almost spot on as far as words went. "There is nothing noble about a dragon, it's ten tons of flaming muscle driven by a brain the size of a gooseberry."

Placing his next two shots carefully he put one blast into the large eyes on the sides of each sturmbeast's face, killing them cleanly. He then of course looked for a fourth, as it didn't make sense to him why the Navi would have gone through the trouble of roping three dumb-as-rocks animals and not go the last step to get one more. The South gate was still intact. Why was astonishingly apparent; outside, standing ankle deep in a mire of bloody chunks as big as his fist, was his aunt.

Ivy Valentine-Killgore stood with arms spread wide and shouted at the jungle, voice slightly distorted by the mask she was wearing. "Is that it? I haven't even broken a sweat yet!"

Dumbstruck was the word, just not quite strong enough, and the words he was thinking tumbled out of his mouth without voluntary effort. "**Holy fuck, my aunt is a badass.**"

And then he looked to his left and right, at the Navi pouring out of the jungle to the East and West, and rushed off to continue killing.

Hanging Gardens:

Erasmus Killgore slowly lifted his head over the fallen tree that shielded him from the sight of the Navi encamped around the small metal structure in the middle of the elevated clearing. If his nose was right, and he felt confident that it was, the metal box was one of the "link chambers" that Doctor Grace and Jake Sullivan were required to use to utilize their Navi bodies. If that were the case he could simply sneak inside and murder Augustine with no one the wiser. If he did so, he could only imagine that the controlled body would simply drop dead for no apparent reason, and he would give quite a bit to see the reactions of the surrounding Navi if that were to happen. He imagined a scene of panic, but that potential future was quashed when he spotted a Navi woman clad in a red shirt and cream colored shorts, clearly not one of the natives, and clearer still Grace Augustine.

He dropped down behind cover for a moment to think, to plan his course of attack. It went without saying that he wanted to eliminate as many of the encamped Navi as he could, but by simply charging in like a barbarian he would run the risk of letting a significant portion of the natives to scatter to the four winds. And as fast as he was there was no way he could run them all down should they scatter thusly. Still thinking he peeked around the side of his hiding spot, letting his infernal eyes scour the clearing for anything he could exploit, with a particular eye for sentries posted high in the trees. He saw three of the latter, along with a scattering of semi-alert Navi with their backs to the larger jungle. Those he could use to his advantage if he were quiet. But the three archers in the trees remained a problem, they had an unsurpassed view of the clearing, and his armored bulk had no chance of hiding from all three of them, nor could he quietly eliminate all three of them before one of them noticed the absence of the other two.

Although, his strategic mind started to make things click into place, if he could eliminate one he could kill the other two in one fell swoop given that he timed his actions properly. He took stock of their positions. The one closest to him was certainly the highest in elevation, but there was a deplorable lack of leaf cover. He would be seen in an instant. The archer on the far side of the camp was comparatively low, and yet almost completely concealed from prying eyes. The only difficulty would be that he was not sure that he would have a clear line of sight on the first sentry from that post. The archer in the center was out of the question, as the only way he could scale that tree were if he walked right into the center of the encampment. Also, the position was completely exposed. It was viewable by all that simply looked up, unless the archer leaned back a little. So, all in all it was a judgment call on his part, and he was leaning towards the far post.

He ducked around the lower end of the fallen tree, into the extended cover of a large stand of shrubbery. His path, planned out to the millimeter, might as well have been painted on the ground in fluorescent colors. He would follow the line of brush up to the link-chamber, duck around the back, scale the tree, and assassinate the Navi in the secluded tree nook. The plan became slightly murky after that point, because at that point it became more about reacting to the situation as it evolved.

The brush shivered as he touched it, shifting to accommodate his armored bulk with little more than a whisper. Moving silently was not a matter of not touching branches and such, but more of how you touched them, letting the boughs slide off of you slowly and not springing back into place suddenly. Taki drilled that into his head early on when he insisted that she teach him all that she knew of stealth. There were additionally certain arcane spells he could use if things got out of hand, but they were subtle, and wouldn't help him if he were actually seen.

He crossed behind the link chamber and reached the tree housing the sentry without incident. And scaling the tree housing the sentry was equally as easy, but the difficulty came with how he was going to kill the Navi from his awkward position without causing too much of a fuss. His eyes fell, happening upon the quiver of arrows, and the idea struck him. Gingerly, as if he were handling glass, he removed one arrow and adjusted it in his one-handed grip until it was like he was holding a knife. As chance would have it, just as he moved to strike the Navi turned slightly towards him, causing the arrow to bury itself in the center of the sentry's forehead instead of left-side temple as he had planned. No matter, the Navi died without so much as a twitch or whimper as he punctured its brain.

Delicately draping the corpse over the branch upon which it had formerly been standing he took the Navi's place in the sheltered alcove, finding quickly that he actually did have an acceptable line of sight on both of the remaining sentries. Further, he had the silent means to dispose of them at his fingertips. He appropriated the longbow off of his latest kill, notching an arrow and testing the draw as he watched quietly for the proper moment. Ideally, the overlooking archer in the center of the encampment would be looking away from his compatriot in the slightly higher point. That way if he placed his shot correctly noting at all would look amiss and he could eliminate the last sentry with impunity. This was difficult, mostly due to the raw size of the arrows the Navi used, and which he was utilizing temporarily.

He waited for maybe five to ten long minutes before one of the female Navi below stood and started to leave the clearing. The archer in the center started watching this other Navi, potentially out of either boredom or sexual desire; he did not care which, and took his eyes off of his partner in the higher position. He took the opportunity and let the shaft fly, scoring a clean hit to the second sentry's left eye, pinning them to the trunk of the tree they were standing in. Not taking any chances he took another shot immediately, striking the final sentry in the side of the head and likewise pinning their body to the respective tree.

A smile crossed his face as he discarded his borrowed weapon back on the corpse it had originally belonged to. "**Say what you will about the technological superiority of guns, sometimes the old ways are still better.**"

He took a quick head-count of the Navi remaining; seven if he counted Augustine's blue puppet, plus the female that had walked out of the clearing. Speaking of whom, he turned his head to notice the Navi returning, bearing a large clay jug that he could presume was filled with water. He did not want that thing to shatter, as such a sound would give him away, but fortune smiled upon him and the female set the jug down before wiping her brow with the back of a forearm. Again, seizing the opportunity presented to him, he leapt from his hiding spot and tackled the oblivious female, breaking both her neck and spine in the same motion.

Staying low he spun about on his heels, creeping back towards the encampment to visit his wrath upon the remaining Navi.

Grave's Bog:

Acheron Killgore liked to think of himself as a man that could suffer through a lot of bullshit before crying uncle, but this situation was really starting to push the shallow reserve of patience he clearly had. The Navi had to have been throwing themselves forward to die in a blue fireball for, oh he had no sense of time so he had no idea. But he was sure it was a really, really long time. They were being funneled through both the East and West gates now since both of their living battering rams had been killed at the North and South, which made it comparatively easy to pick them off. Not that it was completely one-sided; three of the men had been pegged by arrows, dying only moments later. About seven others had been wounded by other weapons, so they'd probably live.

He shot yet another Navi, causing it to explode into black shards of glass for the umpteenth time. "**Anyone else starting to get sick of this bullshit?**"

His aunt hollered over the shooting and screaming. "Speak for yourself junior! This is the most fun I've had outside of the bedroom since your father conquered the world I met him in."

He froze momentarily as his mind unwillingly processed the statement. "**Too, much, fucking, information.**"

Ivy cackled like a witch. "Oh please, do I need to remind you of what your father said before?"

He shuddered. "**No, no I'm good. I'm fine with shooting an endless swarm of pretty much helpless space elves.**" Shaking his head he looked towards the lead soldier. "**What the hell did you do to piss these guys off so much?**"

The wounded man winced and choked out an answer. "Ah, we killed almost a whole herd of sturmbeasts in the area."

He forced a smile onto his face. "**Well, sucks to be them.**" He sighed and shook his head before muttering to himself. "**Come on dad, any day now. I could really use a good laugh about now.**"

Hanging Gardens:

Erasmus Killgore chuckled quietly to himself as he watched the last three Navi, one of them including Augustine. He had eliminated the rest of the natives quietly, of course now it was at the point where even the dimmest of minds would realize that something was going wrong. The last three, Augustine included, were clustered in the center, facing outwards. So, probably the time for stealth was over.

He leapt out of cover into full view, an arm's length from the two "real" Navi, speaking in his most velvety sinister voice. "**Evening, you wretched creatures.**"

The two real Navi attempted to flee to both his left and right, but they failed to evade the reach of his limbs. He caught both of them by the neck and throttled them while Augustine fled.

He pounced, landing feet first on Doctor Augustine's puppet thirty feet from where he had left the ground. "**Now hold on there, where are you going in such a hurry?**" His right hand seized the top of the puppet's head, pulling it back. "**We have so much to discuss. You declined your severance package earlier; perhaps we can renegotiate the terms?**"

Instead of answering, the soulless flesh-sack went completely limp. He hesitated for a moment, uncertain of what had just happened. And then he remembered how exactly the avatar program worked. Sighing, he turned back to the link chamber, watching as the real Grace Augustine opened the door and shut it again as delicately as humanly possible.

He raced back, skidding to a halt at the foot of the metal steps. "**Once again, going somewhere?**"

The doctor whirled around, eyes popping with fear. "How did you-?"

He didn't bother to answer her half-formed question, going on with his diction. "**You know, I was rather looking forward to the novel opportunity to kill someone twice within the space of an hour. You've denied me of that, and what have you to say for yourself?**"

The redhead snarled. "How about, die!"

From behind her back Grace Augustine withdrew one of the assault rifles he had seen in the hands of many a soldier. And while he admittedly was a bit surprised he did not panic, he only raised his left hand in front of his face and endured while the stream of bullets impacted and caromed off of his armor. Honestly, he found it funny, and thought there was something oddly satisfying about the sound of lead hopelessly being beaten against a superior metal.

At the first "click" he lowered his hand and smirked. "**Well, it seems you back an animal into a corner and it will show unexpected ferocity.**" He reached forward and clamped his iron grip down around both of Augustine's hands, lifting the scientist into the air and away from the link chamber. "**I suppose now is as good a time as any.**"

The doctor struggled in his grip. "Time for what?"

He ignored the woman, lost as he was in his own thoughts. "**Ok, so, what was the line again?**" Once the words hit his mind he started to say it, and then sighed. "**Oh there is just no way to say this in any dignified way, now is there?**" He looked Augustine dead in the eye. "**Looks like Lady  
Luck just gave you the finger.**"

He took a deep breath…

Grave's Bog:

Acheron Killgore shot what seemed to be the millionth Navi and finally the blue tide seemed to end. There were so many bodies arrayed in front of him he imagined that he could take the blood from them and fill a pool large enough for Shirahoshi to live in. Not that he would, the adorable crybaby would get so scared that she'd bust an artery, and he'd feel perfectly horrible about it.

He let out a mentally exhausted breath and dropped back to sit down on the pile of corpses, he was tired enough to not care. "**Ugh, damn, maybe I should have taken the hunting job instead.**" He looked skyward, spreading his hands in exasperation. "**What the hell dad, we had a deal.**"

Instantly, almost as if in direct response to his indignation, a thunderous roar sundered the sky, shaking the very ground just with the power of sound. "**I'MA FIRIN' MAH LAZAH! BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARHG!**"

A pure black beam appeared in the sky, shaking leaves from the trees and bowling him backwards into the pile of Navi corpses just with the shockwave of its passing. And as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone, just echoing reverberations of his father's bellow remained.

He sprang to his feet, oblivious to the macabre state of his own person, and pumped his fist into the sky. "**Yeah! That's my Old Man, that's my dad! You hear me? That is my dad!**" He spun on his heel, some sixth sense warning him of an incoming sleight, and leveled a pointing finger at his aunt. "**Don't you dare say anything perverted to ruin the moment.**"

He looked skyward again, revising his opinion of the whole day. All in all, totally worth it.


End file.
